sign in sign up
<<
Home , Abraham Brumberg, Alexander Lubotzky, Avraham Goldberg, Betar, Betar (fortress), Gabriel Narutowicz

THE RISE OF THE ZIONIST RIGHT: POLISH AND THE YOUTH MOVEMENT, 1922-1935

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES

OF

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Daniel K. Heller August 2012

© 2012 by Daniel Kupfert Heller. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/

This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/bd752jg9919

ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of .

Steven Zipperstein, Primary Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Norman Naimark

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Aron Rodrigue

Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education

This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives.

iii ABSTRACT

This dissertation charts the social, cultural and intellectual development of the Zionist Right through an examination of the Brit Yosef Trumpeldor youth movement, known eventually by its Hebrew acronym, Betar. Having garnered over forty thousand members by the mid-1930s, Betar emerged as one of the largest and most influential Jewish youth movements in , and provided the strongest base of support for the world Revisionist movement, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky. Like its parent organization, Betar’s militaristic ethos, vehement opposition to and support of some of the more prominent policies of the European Right made it one of the most controversial Jewish political organizations of its time. Opponents of the movement’s vision for creating a in Mandate —and at times, its supporters—even went so far as to describe Betar’s members as “Jewish Fascists.” Drawing upon letters, newspapers, autobiographies, party journals, meeting protocols and police reports culled from archives in Poland, and the United States, this dissertation explores the lives of Betar’s members and leaders, the formation of their worldviews and the geopolitical context in which they operated. In doing so, it investigates how the most important developments in interwar eastern European politics—the collapse of fledgling democratic governments, the rise of authoritarian regimes and the growth of radical ethno-nationalist movements—influenced the political attitudes and behaviors of Jews in Poland and, ultimately, Mandate Palestine. In contrast to most historical studies of authoritarian politics in interwar , in which Jews figure solely as the victims of right-wing politics, this work argues that many Polish Jews found much worth emulating in the policies and practices of Europe’s Right, even as they condemned the antisemitic activity of right-wing movements across the continent. By exploring how Polish Jews within Betar used right-wing politics to navigate through the rapidly changing political landscape of both Europe and the Middle East between the two world wars, the dissertation illuminates crucial discussions that swept through Polish Jewish society. These included conversations about the role of “youth” and the “masses” in shaping the political destiny of Jews, the ability of democracy to defend Jewish

iv interests, and the legitimacy of violence as a means to create a Jewish homeland in Mandate Palestine. In examining the encounter of Polish Jews with the European Right, the study pays particular attention to the influence of the authoritarian patriotic culture of the interwar Polish state on the ideology and practices of Betar. The dissertation outlines how the core features of the Zionist Right’s ideology emerged primarily as a result of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s interactions with young Polish Jews who were inspired by both Poland’s authoritarian regime and the culture of nationalist Polish youth movements. The study also investigates why it was that Betar’s leaders considered singing the Polish nationalist anthem, marching in Polish patriotic parades and training with Polish officials to be explicitly Zionist acts. By illustrating Betar’s performances of a “Zionist Polishness,” as well as the reactions they provoked, this dissertation reveals how the complex and continually evolving web of social, political and economic allegiances in Poland led Jews across the country to constantly recast what it meant to be a Zionist, as well as what it meant to be a “Polish Jew.” Capturing the voices of Betar’s leaders, members, sympathizers and opponents as they searched for answers to these questions, this dissertation is, ultimately, about the quest of Poland’s Jews to determine not only what made modern Jewish politics in both the new Polish state and Mandate Palestine “Jewish,” but also what constituted “politics” in the first place.

v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My doctoral studies provided me with the chance to meet, work with and learn from an extraordinary range of people, both within and beyond academia. They have enriched my life in innumerable ways, and I am grateful for the opportunity to acknowledge them here. My arrival at Stanford would have never been possible were it not for my outstanding high school and undergraduate teachers. I owe my passion for writing and teaching history to my tenth-grade humanities teacher, Jordan Sable. It was in his classroom that I discovered the lessons the study of history could impart to students, whether it was to be wary of swift and simple answers to complex problems, to be aware of how our own beliefs and experiences shape the way we encounter the world, or to see value in seeking out a range of views when making decisions. His genuine interest in his students’ intellectual growth, and his remarkable ability to make every student in the room feel like their ideas mattered provide, to this day, a model for my teaching. If Jordan ignited my interest in history, Prof. Derek Penslar provided a model for what outstanding university teaching and scholarship could look like. As an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, I was privileged to take several of his classes on the history of Jews in Europe and the Middle East. His range as an historian has long served as an inspiration to me, and played no small role in leading me to choose a topic that spanned from to . I am deeply grateful for his encouragement throughout my undergraduate career and beyond. I am thankful to Anna Shternshis and Piotr Wróbel for also providing me with numerous opportunities at the University of Toronto to cultivate my interest in the history of Jews in . My years of coursework at Stanford were immensely rewarding, thanks to the incredible faculty with whom I studied. Prof. Aron Rodrigue was an outstanding teacher and advisor throughout my graduate career. I am grateful for his superb teaching and his astute suggestions for my dissertation, as well as for his wisdom and candor regarding how to navigate the world of academia. Should I be so lucky to have graduate students of

vi my own, I hope to greet them with the same enthusiasm, attention and kindness that I encountered every time I stepped into his office. I am equally thankful for the sage advice of Prof. Norman Naimark. In my early years of graduate school, he generously offered his time to discuss the history of the European Right and the . Were it not for those meetings, I would have never thought to write about the Jewish Right. He also inspired me to work on a project that spoke as directly to scholars writing about the history of Eastern Europe as it did to historians of Jews in the modern world. As I began to write my dissertation, I often turned to his writing as a model for how to communicate complex ideas in clear and precise prose. I thank him for his wonderful suggestions for my work, and for his encouragement throughout my graduate career. In the same year I met with Prof. Naimark for weekly meetings, I also had the privilege of learning with Prof. Gabriella Safran. Her graduate seminar on Russian literary theory provided a fruitful forum to think about the relationship between literature and , and helped to inform my approach to deciphering Vladimir Jabotinsky’s elusive political prose. Despite her numerous duties as director of the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages at Stanford, she enthusiastically offered to read chapters of my dissertation. I remain, as always, thankful for her encouragement. My greatest debt of gratitude to a faculty member at Stanford is to my primary advisor, Prof. Steven Zipperstein. His extraordinary level of commitment to training historians as thinkers, teachers and writers far surpassed anything I expected when I arrived to Stanford six years ago. Both by example and through his insightful comments on my written work, he encouraged me to strive to produce scholarship that was rigorously researched, compellingly written, and always sensitive to the complexities of human interaction. His impact on my development as a scholar extends far beyond my written work. As I began teaching in the classroom, presenting conference papers, and later, applying for jobs, he offered superb guidance every step of the way. For his wisdom, his encouragement, and his kindness, I thank him. I also express my heartfelt gratitude to the other extraordinary faculty affiliated with the Taube Center for Jewish Studies and the Department of History. I thank in particular Professors Keith Baker, Arie Dubnov, Charlotte Fonrobert, Katherine Jolluck,

vii Richard Roberts, Paul Robinson, Vered Shem-Tov, Peter Stansky, Steve Weizmann and Amir Weiner for their helpful suggestions for my work at various stages of my graduate career. A very special thank-you to Linda Huynh, who served the graduate coordinator for the Department of History and the manager of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, as well as to Art Palmon. Among the greatest gifts of learning at Stanford have been the friendships I formed with my fellow graduate students at Stanford. Whether reading each other’s work or just enjoying each other’s company at the Coupa Café, I thank Shimshon Ayzenberg, Binyamin Blum, Brad Bouley, Kathryn Ward Ciancia, Dina Danon, Markian Dobczansky, Aidan Forth, Emily Kopely, Lauren Jarvis, Katherine McDonough, Ivo Mijnssen, Josh Myers, Andrea Soroko-Naar, Kelly Summers and Chris Stroop for their friendship. I am particularly grateful to Ian Patrick Beacock, who offered useful editorial suggestions for the final draft of this dissertation. I could not have asked for a better colleague and friend than Devin Naar, now at the University of Washington. A special thanks as well to Andrew Bruck, whose encouragement in the early stages of my graduate career proved pivotal to the development of my work. Outside of Stanford, I had the great pleasure of meeting with and learning from numerous scholars. My deepest thanks to Professors David Biale, Patrice Dabrowski, Tatjana Lichtenstein, Dan Miron, , David Shneer, Michael Silber, Laurence Weinbaum and Jeffrey Veidlinger for their helpful suggestions for my work. Through conferences and workshops, I benefited from exchanging work with graduate students and other emerging scholars beyond Stanford who worked in the fields of Eastern Europe and . I thank in particular Jordana De Bloeme, Andrea Bohlman, Tul’si Bhambri, Paul Brykczynski, Hagay Hacohen, Liora Halperin, Joanna Król, Jolanta Mickute, Agnieszka Oleszak, Daniel Rosenthal, Sasha Senderovich, and Rona Yona. Numerous librarians and archivists in the United States, Israel and Poland came to my aid as I searched for documentary evidence for my dissertation. Zachary Baker, the Reinhard Family Curator of Judaica and Hebraica Collections at Stanford, helped bring in several microfilms of newspapers written in Poland between the two world wars, and always offered superb advice about how to take advantage of the resources at Stanford’s libraries. When I arrived in Israel to mine the archives, I was greeted by Amira Stern,

viii Irena Berdan and the wonderful staff at the Jabotinsky Institute. They warmly welcomed me into their archives, and tirelessly worked on my behalf to find hundreds of files. Many thanks as well to the dedicated staff in at the and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People. Once I arrived in Poland, Yale Reisner of the Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, ŻIH) helped me determine my archival itinerary in the country. It is my pleasure to thank him, along with the staff at ŻIH, The Archive of Modern Records (Archiwum Akt Nowych) and the National Library (Biblioteka Narodowa). In Łódź, Włocławek, , Kraków, and Kielce, I was grateful for the help of the staff at the local outposts of the National Archives (Archiwum Państwowe), who directed me towards a wealth of documents about Jewish life in cities and towns throughout interwar Poland. My doctoral work would not have been possible without the generous support of various donors and academic institutions. A generous fellowship from the Reinhard Family allowed me to pursue my studies at Stanford. Numerous grants from the Newhouse Fund and the San Francisco Jewish Community Endowment allowed me to conduct my training in Lublin and undertake various research trips in Poland, Israel and the United States. A generous fellowship from the YIVO Institute for Historical Research gave me the opportunity to read the hundreds of handwritten autobiographies of interwar Polish Jewish youth housed in their archives. In the final stages of my graduate studies, I benefited from doctoral scholarships provided by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Mellon Foundation and the Weter Dissertation Completion Fellowship. I am deeply grateful to these foundations for supporting my work over the years. A few final words of thanks, addressed to my friends and family. I am so blessed to have you in my life. No matter the challenges I faced in academia or beyond, my dear friends Jason Angel, Alyce Arnick, Rachel Brill, PJ Cherrin, Howie Fruitman, Nargiza Karimbaeva, Joseph Mazor, Sophie Roberts, Moshe Schwartz and Sari Siegel were there to offer their encouragement. I am especially grateful to my partner, Alex Taub, for his love and support, as well as to the entire Taub family for cheering me on as I approached the finish line. Whether sitting at a dinner table or dancing at a simkhe, my incredible extended family—the Kupfert clan in Montreal, the Dimant and Heller families in

ix Toronto, and the Toporeks in —were always there to bring laughter and joy into my life. A very special thank-you to my uncle, Dr. Frank Dimant, who enthusiastically read several chapters of this dissertation, and generously offered his insights into the world of contemporary Jewish politics. I could not have asked for more supportive and loving parents. My mother, Dr. Beverly Kupfert, offered me her limitless kindness, warmth and wisdom at every step of the way. My father, Brian Heller, inspired me to face the challenges of graduate school with courage and grit. For as long as I can remember, my twin brother, Joseph Heller, has been my intellectual soul mate. He continues to amaze me with his insights about the world of politics and the craft of writing. I hope that when he reads this dissertation, and discovers the questions that it raises, he will see just how profound of an impact he has had on my life. I am also grateful to his wife, Dalia, for her support and interest in my work. My sister, Mariel Heller, and her husband, Mark Steinman, provided much-needed laughter, wisdom, comfort and encouragement. I take great pride in being the uncle of their beautiful baby daughter, Eva, who provided numerous joyful diversions from researching, writing and editing. My niece is named after my maternal grandmother, Eva Kupfert. Born and raised in Warsaw, she was fifteen when the invaded Poland. A survivor of the , Majdanek and Auschwitz, my grandmother emerged from , then twenty-one years old, as the sole survivor of her family of ten. Not long after she arrived at a Displaced Person’s camp in , she met my grandfather, Morris Kupfert, a young man from a small town near Łódź. They were married soon after. In the picture of their wedding, ten of their friends, fellow survivors of Hitler’s extermination camps, crowd around them. Legend has it that each woman in the picture borrowed the same dress when they stood under the DP Camp’s wedding canopy. Despite the tragedies that had befallen them, they gazed into the camera’s lens with wide smiles and hopeful eyes. I place this picture at my desk whenever I write. When I look into their eyes, I am reminded of their incredible strength and resilience, as well as the power of love to triumph over even the most unspeakable of horrors. It is to them that I dedicate this study.

x

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

I. Jabotinsky Encounters Polish Jewish Youth 37

II. Fascism and the Creation of Betar’s Culture 84

III. Poland, Palestine, and the Politics of Belonging 125

IV. Obedient Children or Reckless Rebels? 175

Conclusion 240

Bibliography 249

xi INTRODUCTION

It was a Saturday evening in late June 1933. Nearly nine hundred Jews had crowded into an auditorium in Radom, a city of some seventy thousand inhabitants in central Poland. They had come to hear Yitzhak Grinboym, the famed Zionist and former representative to the Polish parliament, deliver his campaign speech for the upcoming . The tension in the room was palpable; dozens of police officers had filed in and were lined up against the wall. The police had been tipped off that members of Betar, a popular with nearly thirty-five thousand members across Poland, were planning to make trouble during the speech. The previous week, Grinboym had claimed in newspapers throughout the country that the youth movement, along with its parent organization, the Revisionist party, posed a dangerous threat to the democratic foundations of the Zionist movement.1 In one such article, he warned the Jewish public to neither dismiss Betar’s calls for a military culture to pervade Jewish civil society nor ignore the youth movement’s celebration of violence. Betar’s violent rhetoric was not, he insisted, merely a “game of wicked, wild children”; the youth movement’s members would stop at nothing to prove that “with bullets one can dispose of people and ideas from the road” that was being paved by Zionists to bring about a Jewish homeland in Palestine. At the very least, he wrote, Betar members would “surely silence me with the sound of…screams and would remove me, by force, from the stage” should he try to speak out against them.2 This was precisely what Radom’s local Zionist Organization and the city’s police unit feared would occur that very evening. As Grinboym delivered his speech, everything seemed under control. But just as he concluded, nearly two hundred people throughout the auditorium sprang up from their seats, ready to follow the command of a Betar leader at the foot of the stage. Here is Grinboym, writing in Poland’s most widely circulated daily, recalling what happened next, just before he was chased out of the auditorium and a brawl broke out:

1 Y. Grinboym, “A deklaratsye” Haynt 21 June 1933; “Groys is di kharpe, brenend di shand” Haynt 21 June 1933; “Al ha-dam ha-shafukh: mikhtav galui el betar” Ba-derekh 22 June 1933; “Haim Arlosoroff” Haynt 28 June 1933. 2 Grinboym, “Al ha-dam ha-shafukh”.

1 “What do you think he [the Betar leader] shouted? Nider mit di tsionistishe ferreter! Nider mit Grinboymen! Down with the Zionist traitor? Down with Grinboym?.... You’re wrong. He shouted in Polish, Niech żyje sanacji! Precz z opozycją! Long live the Sanacja [Poland’s ruling authoritarian regime], and down with its opponents!” When a similar brawl erupted at his lecture in Lublin several days later, Grinboym recalled that “in the midst of all the shrieks and screams one could hear sounds of [Betar members singing] ‘Jeszcze Polska nie Zginęła’ [‘Poland is Not Yet Lost,’ Poland’s national anthem] and ‘My pierwsza brygada’”3—the hymn of the First ’s Polish Legion, led by none other than Józef Piłsudski, Poland’s authoritarian leader. For the historian of and Jewish life in Europe between the two world wars, Grinboym’s account—corroborated by a Polish police report on the event, as well as by recollections of audience members that night—raises a host of questions.4 Why would a Zionist movement convinced that Jews were destined for a life of misery and persecution in Europe choose the Polish national anthem as their battle cry? Did not their object of national affection lie thousands of miles away, in Mandate Palestine? The slogans shouted by Betar’s members are no less puzzling. Why would a Zionist movement include among their chants a call to support Poland’s authoritarian regime and suppress its opponents? The regime known as the Sanacja, or “cleansing,” had initially limited its authoritarian practices to public campaigns calling for national unity and occasional interventions in parliamentary politics. By 1933, however, it had tampered with elections, arrested and jailed many of its opponents, placed heavy limits on the activity of public associations and all but paralyzed the power of the lower-house of parliament to enact legislation that contradicted Piłsudski’s wishes.5 What was it about authoritarian Poland’s policies and practices—many of which were already the staple

3 Y. Grinboym. “Untern frishn ayndruk” Haynt 11 July 1933. 4 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne nr.6 za czas od dnia 1-go do 29-go czerwiec 1933r” Urząd Wojewódzki Kielecki, Wydział Społeczno-Polityczny, Sprawozadnia miesięczne ruchu społecznego legalnego, AAN/ MSW/1378/AMZHP12t.11, s.199a; “Tsu der idisher efentlikhkayt in radom” Haynt 29 June 1933. According to both the newspaper and police reports, members of Brit Ha-hayal, a Revisionist organization for veterans of the Polish army, also took part in the disruption of Grinboym’s lectures. 5 For an overview of the Sanacja’s policies and practices, see Antony Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland, 1921-1939: The Crisis of Constitutional Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp.147- 390; Joseph Rothschild, Piłsudski’s Coup d’Etat (: Press, 1966), pp. 157- 372; Czesław Brzoza, Andrzej Leon Sowa, Historia Polski, 1918-1945 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2006), pp.276-330.

2 features of right-wing regimes across Europe—that could be deemed credible, logical, compelling and even instructive to Zionists seeking to build a Jewish state in Mandate Palestine? These questions lie at the heart of this dissertation, which charts the social, cultural and intellectual development of the Zionist Right through an examination of the Brit Yosef Trumpeldor youth movement, known eventually by its Hebrew acronym, Betar. Although Betar clubs could be found in over twenty-six countries, it was in Poland that the vast majority of the youth movement’s members and leaders lived.6 Among the largest Jewish youth movements in the country between the two world wars, Betar also provided the strongest base of support for the Revisionist movement, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky. When it emerged in the mid-1920s, the movement was but one of dozens of Zionist political parties worldwide, each claiming to have found a unique formula for how to build a Jewish homeland in Mandate Palestine. By the mid-1930s, with Betar at its helm, the Revisionist party was one of most powerful Zionist movements in Europe, and posed a genuine threat to the power and popularity of socialist Labor Zionists, who dominated the Zionist political scene.7 In their quest to gain the support of Polish Jewry, the Revisionist movement also competed against non-Zionist Jewish political parties such as the socialist Bund and the Orthodox Agudas Yisroel. Like its parent organization, Betar’s veneration of militarism, vehement opposition to socialism and support of several other prominent policies of the European Right made it one of the most controversial Jewish political movements of its time. Opponents of the movement—and at times, its supporters—even went so far as to describe Betar’s members as “Jewish Fascists.”8

6 In December 1933, Betar’s leaders noted that the movement had over sixty-five thousand members in twenty-six countries. Over half of this membership lived in Poland. See Igrot December 1933, JI/B9/5/5/10. 7 See Mitch Cohen, and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel (New York: Blackwell, 1987); Menahem Sarid, Le-shilton bahartanu: ha-ma’avak al ha-hegemoniya ba- uva- tsiyonut (Hertsliya: Oren, 2004). 8 For Betar’s supporters, see, for example, Dr. D. Stabiecki, “Vos zaynen mir, mir revizyonistn?” Der Emes 3-4 (7-8), 20 November 1928, pp.6-7; Ze’ev Shem Tov, Igrot 12 September 1928, p.2; Le-birur ha- ra’ayon” Igrot 12 December 1928, p. 4. For Betar’s opponents, see “Nider mitn fashistn revisionism” Bafrayung arbeter shtime 28 October 1932; “Oyb nisht nokh nideriker” Unzer frayhayt (11) November 1932, p.1. More examples can be found in Chapter Two of this dissertation.

3 The subject of intense and frequent debate in Jewish communities across Poland, Betar’s ideology and activities often provoked conversations about the dramatic political changes in Europe and the Middle East transforming Jewish life in the . Resurrected in 1918 one hundred and twenty-three years after the final partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Polish state, home to approximately three million Jews, provided unprecedented opportunities for modern Jewish politics to flourish. So too did Mandate Palestine, where its British rulers had declared, at least officially, that they were in favor of a for the Jewish people within the Mandate’s territories. Even as their prospects for a secure and prosperous life dimmed in both Poland and Mandate Palestine in the 1930s, many Jews remained convinced that both locations would provide them the best platforms upon which they could shape and determine their political destiny, and that of Jews worldwide. Some one hundred and twenty-five thousand Polish Jews made up nearly half of all registered new arrivals to Palestine between 1919 and 1937.9 By bridging a gap between conversations about the fate of Jewish life in Poland and Mandate Palestine, Betar provided its members and opponents numerous opportunities to argue over which ideologies and practices would best serve as the foundation of modern Jewish politics. Whether they were leaders of Jewish political parties, parents anxious about the fate of their children, or among the tens of thousands of young adults who belonged to Jewish youth movements, Polish Jews brought Betar to the center of public debate to help articulate their concerns and expectations for the uncertain future that lay ahead. Drawing upon letters, newspapers, autobiographies, party journals, meeting protocols and police reports culled from archives in Poland, Israel and the United States, this dissertation explores the lives of Betar’s members and leaders, the formation of their worldviews and the geopolitical context in which they operated. In doing so, it investigates how the most important developments in interwar eastern European politics—the collapse of fledgling democratic governments, the rise of authoritarian regimes and the growth of radical ethno-nationalist movements—influenced the political attitudes and behaviors of Jews in Poland. In contrast to most historical studies of

9 David Engel, “Poland from 1795 to 1939” in Gershon Hundert, ed., The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (New Haven: Press, 2008), p.1400.

4 authoritarian politics in interwar Europe, in which Jews figure solely as the victims of right-wing politics, this work argues that many Polish Jews found much worth emulating in the policies and practices of Europe’s Right, even as they condemned the antisemitic activity of right-wing movements across the continent.10 By exploring how Polish Jews within Betar used right-wing politics to navigate through the rapidly changing political landscape of both Europe and the Middle East between the two world wars, the dissertation illuminates crucial discussions that swept through Polish Jewish society. These included conversations about the role of “youth” and the “masses” in shaping the political destiny of Jews, the ability of democracy to defend Jewish interests, and the legitimacy of violence as a means to achieve political ends. In examining the encounter of Polish Jews with the European Right, the study pays particular attention to the influence of the authoritarian patriotic culture of the Polish state on the ideology and practices of Betar. It investigates why it was that Betar’s leaders considered singing the Polish nationalist anthem, marching in Polish patriotic parades and training with Polish military officials to be explicitly Zionist acts. By illustrating Betar’s performances of a “Zionist Polishness,” as well as the reactions they provoked, this dissertation reveals how the complex and continually evolving web of social, political and economic allegiances in Poland led Jews across the country to constantly recast what it meant to be a Zionist, as well as what it meant to be a “Polish Jew.” Capturing the voices of Betar’s leaders, members, sympathizers and opponents as they searched for answers to these questions, this dissertation is, ultimately, about the quest of Poland’s Jews to determine not only what made modern Jewish politics in both the new Polish state and Mandate Palestine “Jewish,” but also what constituted “politics” in the first place. My dissertation seeks to contribute to several fields of historical scholarship, including the history of the European Right, the history of Jewish life in interwar Poland, the and the history of youth in modern Europe. Before turning to the

10 For excellent overviews of the role of in the politics of interwar Europe’s Right, see Saul Friedländer, and the Jews: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998); Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater : Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918-1930, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp.189-297; Nicholas Nagy- Talavera, The Green Shirts and Others: A History of Fascism in and Romania (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1970); Daniel Tilles and Salvatore Garau, eds., Fascism and the Jews: and Britain (: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011); Samuel Kalman, The Extreme Right in Interwar : The Faisceau and the Croix de Feu (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).

5 main body of the dissertation, the following pages will explore how my work both complements and departs from the approaches taken by historians in these fields, both in its source base and analytical approach.

Jews and the Right At first glance, the notion that a Jewish political movement in Poland claiming hundreds of thousands of supporters by 1935 could embrace—let alone admire— nationalist authoritarian politics might seem outrageous, and at the very least, impossible to anyone familiar with the fate of Polish Jews in the Second World War. The Nazi genocide of two-thirds of Europe’s Jews, including approximately ninety percent of Polish Jewry, certainly loomed large over scholars like Ernst Nolte, Eugen Weber, Renzo de Felice and George Mosse when they set out in the 1960s to pioneer the historical study of right-wing politics in Europe between the two world wars.11 On the one hand, these scholars recognized that the politics of the right-wing movements that blanketed the continent in the 1920s and 1930s were characterized by a broad spectrum of attitudes and behaviors. Attempts to detect common traits among these movements quickly produced a staggering number of scholarly debates about the origins, aims and practices of the European Right.12 Yet despite their tendency to reject any hypothesis made about a unifying thread linking Europe’s right-wing movements, these scholars and their successors took the case of the Third Reich, along with the evidence of hostility towards Jews expressed by right-wing movements across interwar Europe, as ample proof that virulent antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence were constant and crucial components of

11 Ernst Nolte, Der Fascismus in seiner Epoche: die Action Française, der Italienische Faschismus, Der Nazionalsozialismus (Munich: R. Piper, 1964); Eugen Weber, Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: van Nostrand, 1964); Renzo de Felice, Le interpretazioni del fascismo (: Laterza y Figli, 1969); George Mosse, “Introduction: The Genesis of Fascism” Journal of Contemporary History 1 (1966), pp.14-26. For an excellent introduction to the range of debates about right-wing politics in the 1960s, see Ernst Nolte, “The Problem of Fascism in Recent Scholarship” in Henry A. Turner, Jr., ed., Reappraisals of Fascism (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), pp.26-42. For further references on the immense literature about the taxonomy of Fascism, see Chapter Two of this dissertation. 12 For an overview of these debates, see Hans Rogger, “Afterthoughts” in Eugen Weber and Hans Rogger, The European Right: A Historical Profile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), pp.575-589; R. Griffin, ed., International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus (London: , 1998); Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Knopf, 2004), pp.221-240.

6 interwar Europe’s Right.13 The centrality of antisemitism in the worldviews of members of radical right-wing mass movements in interwar France, Poland, Hungary, Romania and elsewhere—not to mention the behavior of many of them during the Second World War—made, then as now, for compelling evidence. It is thus unsurprising that scholars have presumed that Jews living in interwar Europe uniformly condemned the blend of nationalism and authoritarianism that increasingly posed a threat to their lives. Many scholars have also taken for granted that interwar Jewish political activists across the political spectrum deemed democracy to be a necessary criteria for the practice of modern Jewish politics, if not its very foundation. This dissertation restores a historical moment in which Europe’s Jews had good reason to think otherwise. As other historians have pointed out, the history of the European Right between the two world wars does not begin with the rise of the Third Reich in 1933.14 From the mid-1920s, Europeans turned to Italy, not Germany, as the model of what a country could look like if right-wing politics reigned in full force. In power a full decade before the Nazi takeover of Germany, Italian Fascists considered neither antisemitism nor mass violence to be crucial components of their ideological and behavioral repertoire.15 Furthermore, Fascist Italy had won many admirers among government officials from democratic countries such as Britain, France and the United States. In Mussolini’s campaign for a martial ethos of discipline, order, unity and sacrifice to pervade every aspect of society, along with his suppression of public dissent, they saw the key to restoring order in Italy, reinvigorating its economy, and, above all,

13 For one of the earliest and most well-known attempts to use Germany as a model for establishing the criteria for fascism, see Ernst Nolte, Die Krise des Liberalen Systems und die Faschistischen Bewegungen (München: Piper, 1968). 14 Stanley Payne, Fascism: Comparison and Definition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980), p.4; Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Knopf, 2004), pp.9,13. 15 See Stanley Payne’s essays comparing Mussolini and Hitler’s regimes in Payne, Fascism: Comparison and Definition, pp.42-104. By the late 1930s and through the Second World War, racist and antisemitic violence became a prominent feature of Italian fascist policy. See, most recently, Davide Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation During the Second World War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

7 preventing the spread of communism.16 Italy’s authoritarian regime appeared all the more successful to onlookers when they compared it to the fragile parliamentary democracies of eastern Europe’s new nation-states, established in 1918 following the collapse of the Russian, Habsburg, and Ottoman Empires. As the 1920s progressed, many observers of eastern European politics warned that the political mechanisms of the region’s nascent liberal democracies, including universal suffrage, constitutional order and parliamentary rule with a weak executive, were not simply proving unable to contend with the social and economic turmoil left in the wake of the First World War—they were exacerbating it.17 Proportional representation seemed to only nourish political factionalism and polarization in newly-formed countries such as Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia, where a plethora of political parties were established along ethnic, religious and class lines. Rejecting negotiation and compromise, politicians spent most of their time in parliament denouncing their opponents and spurning the type of coalition politics required to pass legislation that could stabilize their country’s economy and rebuild its infrastructure.18 Against this backdrop, many eastern Europeans expressed relief when authoritarian governments took the reins of power in their countries. Historians such as Joseph Rothshchild and Antony Polonsky have documented how the fate of parliamentary politics in Poland, along with the reactions they provoked among the country’s inhabitants, proved no exception to these trends.19 Several other students of the period, too, have acknowledged that many Jews in Poland initially supported Józef Piłsudski’s coup d’état of 1926.20 Their attempts to explain Jewish

16 P.G. Edwards, “The Foreign Office and Fascism, 1924-1929” Journal of Contemporary History, 5,2 (1970), pp.153-161; William I. Shorrock, “France and the Rise of Fascism in Italy, 1919-1923” Journal of Contemporary History 10, 4 (October 1975), pp.591-610; John P. Diggins, “Flirtation with Fascism: American Pragmatic Liberals and Mussolini’s Italy” The American Historical Review vol.71, no.2 (January 1966), pp.487-506; Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Penguin Books, 1998) pp.63-77. 17 Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (London: Penguin Books, 1999), pp.20-25 18 Useful surveys of the disintegration of parliamentary democracy across eastern Europe in the 1920s can be found in Antony Polonsky, Little Dictators: The History of Europe Since 1918 (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1975); Joseph Rothschild, East Between the Two World Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974). 19 Antony Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland, 1921-1939: The Crisis of Constitutional Government; Joseph Rothschild, Piłsudski’s Coup d’Etat. 20 See, for example, Jacek Walicki, Ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce w latach 1926-1930 (Łódź: Ibidem, 2005), pp.133-148; Szymon Rudnicki, Żydzi w parlamencie II Rzeczypospolitej (Warszawa: 2004), p. 223- 241.

8 support for the Sanacja tend to focus on Piłsudski’s relatively tolerant approach to the country’s national minorities, as well as his determination to prevent public outbursts of violence, including antisemitic riots. In contrast, my dissertation explores a wide range of social, political and economic factors that led many Polish Jews, particularly those coming of age in interwar Europe, to find in the Sanacja’s leadership cult, military culture and opposition to socialism a compelling alternative to democratic politics. While it is true that many in eastern Europe—including Zionists—deemed Jews to be the region’s consummate outsiders, my dissertation highlights how the political attitudes of Polish Jews were not only deeply embedded within their eastern European context, but could also frequently echo those of their non-Jewish neighbors. The story told in these pages about the impact of Polish authoritarianism on the development of Betar will come as a surprise for those acquainted with historical accounts of the Revisionist movement and its leader, Vladimir Jabotisnky. Produced over the past thirty years, this scholarship sought to call into question the often broad- sweeping claims made in both the hagiographic writing of the Revisionist movement’s acolytes and in accounts that set out to demonize the movement.21 The pioneering work of Ya’akov Shavit did much to provide signposts for the overall development of the Revisionist movement’s ideology. In particular, his work demonstrated that the group’s ideological development was linked to wider intellectual currents circulating in the interwar period.22 Eran Kaplan similarly took up this task in his more recent study of Revisionism, which argued that the party’s notions of geography, aesthetics, politics and

21 Most accounts of the Revisionist movement’s history written by its sympathizers are embedded within biographies of Jabotinsky. See Shalom Ben Baruch, Z’abotinsky, lohem ha-umah (Jeruslaem: Sh. Shvarts, 1943); Joseph Nedava, Z’abotinski be-hazon ha- (Tel Aviv: Shelah, 1950); Joseph Schechtman, Rebel and Statesman: The Vladimir Jabotinsky Story (New York: T. Yoseloff, 1955); Schechtman, Fighter and Prophet: The Last Years (New York: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1961); , Z’abo: Biografiya shel Ze’ev Z’abotinski, vols 1 and 2 (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1993). For histories of Betar and Revisionism written by former leaders of these movements, see Joseph Schechtman and Yehuda Benari, History of the Revisionist Movement (Tel Aviv: Hadar, 1970); Chen. Ben-Yerucham, Sefer Betar: korot u-mekorot vols. 1-3 (Tel Aviv: Ha-merkaz, 1969-1973). The most well known popular history of Revisionism that aimed to discredit the movement is Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism From Jabotinsky to Shamir (London: Zed Books, 1984). 22 Ya’akov Shavit, Me-rov le-medina: ha-tenua ha-revizionistit, ha-tochnit ha-hityashvut ve-ha-ra’ayon ha-hevrati, 1925-1935 (Tel Aviv: Yariv, 1978); Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement (London: Frank Cass, 1988).

9 gender were inextricably connected to trends in European intellectual life.23 In contrast to these two scholars, who were primarily interested in the history of ideas, both Joseph Heller and Colin Shindler sought to combine their histories of the movement’s ideological development with accounts of key moments in its organizational history.24 While all of these historians have done much to paint a portrait of Revisionism that is far more nuanced than those previously offered by opponents and supporters of the movement alike, they nonetheless retained two problematic methodological approaches from these earlier works. The first is to rely almost exclusively on Jabotinsky’s political prose and correspondence to explain the development of Betar and the Revisionist movement at large. Much like earlier historians of right-wing movements across Europe, students of Revisionism have taken the leadership cult of the movement as proof that focusing upon the leader’s biography is the key to understanding the movement’s inner workings.25 While some works of scholarship occasionally include a small chorus of acolytes responding to Jabotinsky’s proclamations, the focus of nearly all of these studies is squarely upon the leader.26 The second assumption shared by many of these historians is that the thousands of articles Jabotinsky wrote during his political career articulate a coherent political message that changed little during the interwar period. This scholarly approach was first popularized in the late 1980s by political philosopher Raphaela Bilski Ben-Hur, whose portrayal of a “Jabotinskian” philosophy was based on a highly selective, and often unrepresentative collage of quotes from his writings that were completely wrested from the historical context in which they were produced. To varying degrees, Ya’akov Shavit, Eran Kaplan, and more recently, Rinat Gorodenchik-Robinson, applied Ben-Hur’s

23 Eran Kaplan, The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and its Ideological Legacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005) 24 Joseph Heller, “Ha-monizm shel ha-matara o ha-monizm shel ha-emtza’im? ha-mahloket ha-ra’ayonit ve-ha-politit ben ze’ev z’abotinski le-ben aba ahimeir, 1928-1933” Tsion 52,3 (1987), pp.315-369; The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940-1949 (London: Frank Cass, 1995), pp.1-58; Heller, “Jabotinsky’s Use of National Myths in Political Struggles” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 12 (1996), pp.185-201; Colin Shindler, The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right (London: IB Taurus, 2009) 25 See, for example, Ernst Nolte, Der Fascismus in seiner Epoche. 26 See Shindler, pp.163-212.

10 approach to their own work.27 Although Colin Shindler and Joseph Heller have done much to remedy this approach by examining Jabotinsky’s responses to challengers within the Revisionist camp in the 1930s, they also frequently rely upon citations drawn from his writings throughout the interwar period to construct clear and unchanging ideological positions for Jabotinsky.28 It is thus unsurprising that until this point, scholars have presumed that the Revisionist movement’s preoccupation with militarism, its opposition to socialism and its embrace of many authoritarian practices were the product of a coherent philosophy imposed by Jabotinsky upon the movement from its founding in 1925 and eagerly accepted by its members from then onwards. It has similarly been presumed that Jabotinsky’s account of Betar’s founding, which he linked to a Jewish student organization in , in 1923, tells the entire story of the origins of the youth movement. Taking Jabotinsky at his word, Esther Stein-Ashkenazi, the only historian to produce a monograph dedicated to the history of Betar, devoted her brief exploration of the movement’s origins to the ideological debates of a small group of Betar leaders in Latvia in the early 1920s. The remainder of her study chronicled the development of Betar in Palestine, where the youth movement’s membership numbers in the interwar period never surpassed fifteen hundred.29 Taking issue with Ya’akov Shavit’s observations on the influence of Polish Romanticism on Jabotinsky’s thought, Stein-Ashkenazi insisted that Polish nationalism had a meager impact on the development of Revisionism, and was just one of many European nationalist ideological traditions referred to by Jabotinsky over the course of his career.30 In my dissertation, I depart from the approaches towards interpreting Revisionist ideology outlined above. I place the thousands of articles written by Jabotinsky more stringently within the historical context in which they were written, and I attend to the ways in which his thinking evolved over time. I also put Jabotinsky’s writings in

27 Rinat Gorodenchik Robinson, Se’ara mesaya’at: ha-tenuah ha-revizionistit be-shanim 1925-1940 (Jerusalem: Yad Yitshak Ben Tsvi, Machon Z’abotinski, 2010); Raphaella Bilski Ben-Hur, Kol yahid hu melekh: ha-mahshava ha-hevratit ve-ha-medinit shel Ze’ev Z’abotinski (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1988). 28 See Shindler, pp. 68-147; Joseph Heller, “Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Revolt against Materialism—In search of a World View” Jewish History 12,2 (1998), pp.51-67. 29 Esther Stein-Ashkenazi, Betar be-erets yisra’el, 1925-1947 (Jerusalem: Machon Jabotinsky, 1997), pp.4, 9-42. 30 Stein-Ashkenazi, pp.37-8; Ya’akov Shavit, “Politics and Messianism: The Zionist Revisionist Movement and Polish Political Culture” Studies in Zionism 6,2 (1985), pp.229-246.

11 conversation with the thousands of letters, articles and pamphlets written by those in Poland who claimed allegiance to him. Until this dissertation, this immensely rich source base, housed largely at the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv, has been virtually untapped by historians. By combining a careful analysis of Jabotinsky’s political prose and correspondence with a detailed investigation of previously unexamined sources such as letters, pamphlets and police reports concerning early Revisionist youth movements in Poland, an altogether different history of the Revisionist movement’s ideology emerges. I demonstrate how the core features of Betar’s ideology emerged primarily as a result of Jabotinsky’s interactions with young Polish Jews who were themselves inspired by both the Sanacja and the culture of patriotic Polish youth movements. I illustrate how adherents of Revisionism did not simply accept a political vision imposed from above, but rather played an active role in shaping that vision. I also highlight how the constantly shifting political ambitions of both Jabotinsky and his followers often determined the form and content of the movement’s ideological proclamations. While it is common practice for political historians to pay attention to the interplay between the power ambitions of political leaders and the ideological positions they articulate, doing so for the Revisionist movement marks a significant departure from previous scholarship. To more fully capture the range of voices that comprised the world of Betar, I also take advantage of a treasure trove of autobiographies written by Polish Jews coming of age in interwar Poland. These autobiographies were written in 1932, 1934 and 1939 as part of a contest spearheaded by the famous Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich in Wilno’s “Jewish Institute for Scientific Research” [Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut, YIVO]. Of the six hundred and twenty-seven autobiographies collected by YIVO, just over half were lost or destroyed during the Second World War. Among the three hundred and two autobiographies that survived the war, now housed at YIVO’s headquarters in New York, I was able to analyze some twenty-five that were written by young Jews who, at one point or another, joined Betar. While sensitive to the complications that autobiographies present as historical sources, I use them to help situate the political activity of Betar’s members within the broader context of their lives, including their economic standing, religiosity, schooling, family and friends. The recollections of these young men and women also provide a window into how young Jews interpreted the ideological

12 proclamations of their leaders, and the extent to which these proclamations played a role in their decision to join the movement in the first place. What emerges is a study of youth movements and youth movement culture that considers how the ideological prescriptions of political leaders often did not correspond to the ways in which their members encountered, experienced and made sense of their participation in politics.31 While this study does not focus primarily on the experiences and perspectives of “ordinary” Betar members, I nonetheless hope that by including some of their voices in this dissertation, I can explore the complex dynamics at play when young Jews chose to join or abandon political organizations. I also hope that my use of their autobiographies, along with several handwritten journals produced by individual Betar clubs, can help capture some of the internal life of youth movement clubs—from their intricate rituals of dressing, reading, speaking and marching to the portraits, posters and slogans that decorated the walls of their meeting places. By providing a window into the lives of Betar’s members, I ultimately aim to illustrate the variety of ways in which they experienced and made sense of authoritarian politics. In examining Betar’s encounters with Polish authoritarian culture, the dissertation also engages with scholarship on the nature of authoritarian politics across Europe. No discussion of Betar’s relationship to fascism can dodge the fervent debate among historians of the European Right about what constitutes fascist politics in the first place. Much of the difficulty historians experience when trying to pin down the meaning of fascism arises from the fact that not one of the political beliefs and practices associated with fascism was uniquely fascist. The organization of was a common characteristic of European left-wing movements throughout the nineteenth century. Liberals and conservatives alike often expressed hostility towards socialists throughout Europe. Intellectuals in fin-de-siècle Europe invoked socialist ideals when

31 On the autobiographies’ accounts of the factors that drew Jewish youth into particular political movements, see Michael Steinlauf, “Jewish Politics and Youth Culture in Interwar Poland: Preliminary Evidence from the YIVO Autobiographies” in Zvi Gitelman, The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe (: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), pp.91-104; Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Marcus Moseley, Michael Stanislawski, “Introduction” in Jeffrey Shandler, ed., Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Interwar Poland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp.xi-xlii; Ido Bassok, “Tenuot ha-noar ha-yehudiot be-polin ben shete milhamot ha-olam” in Avraham Noversthern, ed., Alilot ne’urim: otobiyografiyot shel bene no’ar yehudim mi-polin ben shete milhamot ha-olam (Tel Aviv: Institute for the History of Polish Jewry, 2011), pp.769-792.

13 developing the corporatist economic models that came to serve as Fascist Italy’s inspiration. Nearly all European political movements in the interwar period were preoccupied with the aesthetics of politics, from mass parades to fostering political myths. Historians also struggle to determine the criteria that separate fascist from authoritarian regimes in interwar Europe. Authoritarian governments in interwar Poland, Romania, Hungary and elsewhere in eastern Europe shared most, if not nearly all of Fascist Italy’s ideological repertoire. As a result, some historians argue that the difference between authoritarianism and fascism is of degree, not of kind. Fascist behavior, in other words, should be measured not merely by the presence or absence of certain ideological positions, but also by the frequency and intensity with which they appeared in political rhetoric and practice. 32 Unsurprisingly, there is little consensus about the location of the threshold that semi-authoritarian and authoritarian political ideas and behaviors have to pass in order for them to be characterized as fascist. The question of what fascist behavior looked like in practice provides yet another roadblock to arriving at a stable definition of fascism. Of the variety of European political movements commonly termed as fascist, only a few succeeded in gaining any political power; Italian and German fascists alone managed to seize the levers of power at a national level. As Michael Mann and others have suggested, any model for fascism that relies upon two cases to predict how dozens of movements might have behaved is, at best, empirically suspect.33 Historians seeking an answer to the question of whether or not Jabotinsky and all of Betar’s members were fascist will be sorely disappointed by this dissertation. So too will readers who seek to use Betar’s history as a way to bolster one of the now hundreds of theories proposing a coherent definition of “fascism” that stretches both geographically and chronologically across interwar Europe. As historians such as Robert Paxton have argued, scholars searching for ideological coherence among Europe’s fascists not only flatten the internal ambiguities and contradictions of fascist thought and behavior. They also miss a crucial point: as much as fascists across the continent issued

32 Most attempts to distinguish between semi-authoritarianism, authoritarianism and fascism implicitly accept this point. See, for example, Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), pp.14-19 and Michael Mann, Fascists (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.43-48. 33 Mann, p. 10.

14 bold, brash and sweeping political declarations, they saw little need to present an ideologically seamless world to their followers, and were constantly redefining their aims and practices.34 Bearing Paxton’s observations in mind, I use Betar’s flirtations with fascism to demonstrate how the very idiosyncratic, continuously shifting and bewildering nature of fascist ideology may offer the clearest window into the dynamics of the interwar political arena of the European Right, where ambition, conviction and pragmatism kept ideology in a constant state of flux. I do not attempt to smooth out the contradictions and complexities that were on full display in Betar’s discussions of whether or not the values associated with fascism were Jewish and Zionist. Providing my readers with a full view of Betar’s largely unresolved discussions, I illuminate the movement’s struggle to determine what the terms “democracy” and “fascism” meant in the first place. The attempts of Betar’s members to both understand and revise the meanings of these terms in ways that would serve their political goals vividly illustrates how the interwar Zionist Right constantly adopted, reinterpreted and rejected components of the ideological cauldron from which they drew. Although I argue against offering a definitive definition of fascism, I nonetheless examine the extent to which Betar’s leaders and members embraced a repertoire of convictions and values that they themselves described as fascist. This repertoire included the desire to create a nationalist, authoritarian state that transcended regional and class divisions; the notion that discipline, order, unity and sacrifice should pervade every aspect of society; the value of an omnipotent leader; the exaltation of violence and war; the privileging of deeds over words and emotion over reason; and finally, the moral necessity of suppressing opponents of the nation, chief among them socialists, communists and parliamentary democrats. By doing so, the dissertation makes a case for

34 See Robert Paxton, “The Five Stages of Fascism” The Journal of Modern History 70,1 (March 1998), pp.1-9 as well as his most recent book on the subject, The Anatomy of Fascism, pp.3-23. Paxton’s approach challenges the widely held view that one can describe an ideologically coherent ‘essence’ of fascism. Among the most well-known works to take this approach are Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914- 1945; George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964); Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1993); Ze’ev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Asheri, The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; Roger Eatwell, Fascism: A History (London: Chatto and Windus, 1995);Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, Present, Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

15 why it was that many of Betar’s leaders in Poland had good reason to describe themselves as fascist. In his embrace of fascism’s contradictions and complexities, Paxton also has much to teach scholars who have pored over the thousands of articles penned by Jabotinsky in an effort produce a decisive definition of his worldview. So too does Michael Stanislawski, whose study of Jabotinsky’s prose as an adolescent in turn-of-the- century Russia highlighted how the very idiosyncratic, contradictory tendencies of Jabotinsky’s often stunning writing were deliberate aesthetic choices deeply rooted in fin- de-siècle, cosmopolitan European culture, which eschewed rigid definitions of identity.35 My dissertation extends Stanislawski’s investigation of the interplay between aesthetics and political ideology into Jabotinsky’s interwar writings. Despite the fact that Jabotinsky spoke of a great divide between his political and literary work, his rhetorical skill honed as a writer proved crucial to his political success.36 It is thus somewhat surprising that historians have yet to examine how the form and structure of his political writing informed the interpretation of its content. This dissertation takes up this crucial task. At once brash and eloquent, Jabotinsky’s weekly columns in Polish Jewish newspapers demonstrated an intellectual breadth that far surpassed that of most of his contemporaries in the world of Jewish politics. In a typical article, he could dart between topics as diverse as the Renault car factory in France, a dog he saw on the street, life in South , Rhodesia and —and somehow weave them together into an elegant and often provocative tale about Zionist politics. Indeed, it was largely the incendiary nature of Jabotinsky’s writing that kept the rapt attention of his allies and adversaries alike. “On the day that the newspaper was published,” a Betar member from the eastern city of later recounted, Jabotinsky’s “supporters and opponents would read his articles, and afterwards, the arguments would begin without end, because they were like little atomic bombs.”37 Provocative prose was not simply a literary habit from his fin-de-siècle days. Rather, it served as a political strategy; “an exaggeration,” he

35 Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp.116-202. 36 See Dan Miron, Ha-gabish ha-memukad: prakim al Ze’ev Z’abotinsky ha-mesaper ve-ha-meshorer (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 2011), pp.9-13. 37 Ya’akov Na’or in “Hemshekh erev zikhronot betar Grodno,” DRC/T-32/271.

16 explained in one of his most famously controversial articles, “can sometimes be an entirely practical means to beat into our dull, drowsy heads a little bit of truth.”38 Above all, however, Jabotinsky’s talent as a political writer rested in his ability to situate his bold, provocative claims within an intricate web of contradictions and conditional clauses. Despite the fervent passion with which he employed the terms and phrases that became staples of Betar’s unique political vocabulary, he simultaneously offered multiple, often conflicting interpretations for what these terms actually meant. Reflecting on the constantly shifting meaning of a typical Jabotinsky slogan, a member of Betar’s national leadership in Poland found himself explaining to the youth movement’s membership in 1933 that “its form has yet to be frozen, it finds itself in a dynamic, developing state; changes are still likely to take place.”39 Even the very name of the youth movement possessed two interpretive options for its members. Should Betar, the Coalition of [Brit Yosef Trumpeldor], strive, like its namesake, to represent all Zionist youth who supported the principles of national unity and self- defense?40 Or should they build an elite group motivated by the same ideals of revolt, and zealotry evoked by the legend of the Jewish rebels who died at Betar, the last standing fortress in Palestine during the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 2 CE? Like the name of the youth movement itself, the ambiguities of Jabotinsky’s prose were essential because they allowed Betar activists to interpret their leader’s writings as they saw fit. The intellectual arithmetic performed on his essays by Betar’s leaders in the youth movement’s journals—adding and embellishing several points, subtracting or minimizing others—allowed ample space within the movement for militarist, and in turn, fascist ideas, even if its leader occasionally declared himself to be an opponent—or reluctant supporter—of both. As Jabotinsky and other Betar leaders wove their way through a myriad of qualifications and clauses to frame their program as Jewish, Zionist and, in later years, “purely” democratic, they were performing many of the same intricate

38 Jabotinsky, “Yo, brekhn” Haynt 4 November 1932. 39 Yosef Klarman, “Hadar” Madrikh Betar 5 (October 1933), p.24 40 See chapter two for a description of Joseph Trumpeldor’s life and work.

17 steps of ideological choreography as Italian Fascists.41 Providing Betar members with a diverse set of images and arguments, rarely coherent and often contradictory, Jabotinsky and his colleagues allowed their followers to flirt with fascism’s values while dodging, if they so desired, the term itself. Of the variety of expeditions taken by Betar’s leaders into the world of fascism, I pay particular attention to their attempt to determine whether or not violence—in the Zionist case, directed towards Mandate Palestine’s Arab majority— could serve a redemptive, cleansing experience. My dissertation demonstrates how the elliptical linguistic style typical of fascist movements was not simply one discursive approach among many, but was a crucial component of Betar’s culture, if not its very foundation. By embracing the contradictions inherent in Jabotinsky’s texts, along with those produced by his followers, I hope to help readers arrive at a better understanding of the discursive system in which Betar’s members operated, as well as the strategies which Jabotinsky adopted to navigate among the array of approaches to right-wing politics articulated by his followers.

Polish Jews and the Politics of Nationality

Ever ready to denounce Betar, its opponents saw in the youth movement’s flirtations with fascism a full-fledged acceptance of radical right-wing politics. Hence the epithets—from “little Jewish fascists,” to the “foot soldiers” of the “Jewish Mussolini,” and later, the “Jewish Hitler”—that followed the youth movement’s members wherever they went.42 Betar’s opponents in Poland drew in equal measure from examples closer to home to discredit the youth movement. Yitzhak Grinboym hoped that his portrayal of Betar’s members in Radom as the henchmen of the Sanacja regime would rouse the Polish Jewish public to banish the youth movement from Jewish communal life. Claims that Betar’s members were “acting Polish” aimed to exploit deep-seated fears among

41 On the fascist construction of democracy, see Dylan Riley, The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain, and Romania, 1870-1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), pp.1- 71. On political rhetoric in Fascist Italy, see Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 2001). 42 See, for example, “Der yudisher Mussolini” Naye folktsaytung 4 January 1929; “Tsum fashistishn onfal” Bafrayung arbeter-shtime 26 October 1928; “Nider mitn fashistn revisionism” Bafrayung arbeter shtime 28 October 1932; “Oyb nisht nokh nideriker” Unzer frayhayt (11) November 1932, p.1. On the rise of the phrase “Vladimir Hitler” among Labor Zionists, see Shabtai Teveth, Ben Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886-1948 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987), pp.414-415.

18 many Polish Jews that Jewish youth were increasingly abandoning Jewish beliefs and behaviors in order to assimilate into Polish society. The accusation of perpetuating assimilation, frequently invoked by Polish Jewish leaders across the political spectrum, was considered particularly offensive among Zionists, who insisted that a Jewish state in Mandate Palestine would ensure the protection and preservation of Jewish “peoplehood.” Given the near-constant presence of assimilation accusations in battles between various Jewish political parties, it would not be surprising for a reader of the interwar Polish Jewish press, both then and now, to dismiss Grinboym’s claims as no more than political rhetoric. What makes Grinboym’s accusations so intriguing, however, is not the vehemence with which they were uttered, but rather, the response they failed to provoke. Never once did Betar’s leaders deny their connection to Polish patriotic culture. Conversely, a fascinating web of national allegiances can be found in the youth movement’s journals, the correspondence between Betar members and officials, the autobiographies of Betar members, and the reports of local and national Polish government officials. Soon after Betar was officially established in Poland in 1927, Polish police reported that members of the youth movement were performing the very same ceremonial rituals in town and city squares across the country that local units of the Polish army and Polish scouts staged throughout the year during Polish patriotic celebrations. On a Zionist-themed holiday, for example, it would not be uncommon for Polish Jews to see Betar members lay a wreath at local memorials for soldiers who fought for Polish independence during the First World War. Nor would Polish Jews have been surprised by the synagogue ceremonies that followed, in which prayers for Piłsudski and Jabotinsky would be uttered in the same breath. On Polish national holidays, Betar members could also be seen on parade. Even more striking was the fact that Betar leaders throughout the country boasted that they staged these events with the cooperation and, in some cases, participation of local Polish military officials. Furthermore, Betar’s leaders frequently remarked in their journals that much of the success of their movement lay in its ability to provide opportunities for young Jews to perform the behaviors associated with “Polskość”, or “Polishness.” No less significant was the reaction of the Polish government to these performances. Government officials often encouraged Betar

19 members to participate in Polish patriotic parades, and even opened their local paramilitary training units to them. At various points, the youth movement’s participants, leaders and Polish government officials shared the same conviction. Not only was there something fundamentally “Polish” about Betar’s Zionism; to be a young Zionist was to exhibit the qualities of the ideal Pole. Then, as now, there would have been good reason to call into question Betar’s claim that the attitudes and behaviors of Polish Jews were identical, let alone similar, to those of Catholic , who made up two-thirds of interwar Poland’s population. Ever since the thirteenth century, when Jews came to be a significant presence in Poland, the social, religious and economic profile of Jews was fundamentally different than that of their non-Jewish neighbors. These differences persisted through the sixteenth-century establishment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a vast territory which included present-day Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and most of and Estonia. While the majority of the Commonwealth’s population was made up of Christian peasants living in villages, most of the region’s Jews lived in towns and small cities. In stark contrast to their non-Jewish neighbors, they earned their living primarily as moneylenders, peddlers, market vendors, and inn and tavern keepers.43 Their relationship to the Commonwealth’s governing authorities also differed significantly from that of their non-Jewish neighbors. Many local Polish magnates came to rely upon Jews to manage their vast estates, most of which lay east of the river, where the bulk of the population was Greek Orthodox and spoke Ukrainian. This often led to Jews being perceived by the estates’ non-Jewish inhabitants as the middlemen and representatives of the Polish magnates—an association that occasionally provoked hostility towards Jews entrusted to collect taxes on the magnate’s behalf.44 When coupled with the anti-Jewish theology frequently promoted by Christian clerics in villages, towns, and cities throughout the commonwealth, these social

43 For an overview of the economic profile of Jews in early modern Poland, see Gershon Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Geneology of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp.32-56. 44 On Jews and the Polish nobility, see Moshe Rosman, The Lords’ Jews: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990); Adam Teller, Kesef, koah ve-hashpa’ah: ha-yehudim ba-ahuzot bet Radz’ivil be-Lita ba-me’ah ha- 18 (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar le-toldot yisrael, 2006).

20 and economic differences could cause tension, conflict, and even violence—mostly mild and sporadic, but occasionally severe and widespread—directed against Jews.45 Despite the significant social and economic changes wrought by the collapse of the Commonwealth—and, years later, the demise of the Habsburg, Russian and Prussian Empires—the social, economic and religious differences between Jews and non-Jews persisted in Poland between the two world wars. While the vast majority of the country’s Poles, , and Belarusians remained in the countryside as peasants, most Jews, who made up approximately ten percent of the country’s population, continued to eke out a living in towns and cities primarily as marketplace peddlers, petty shopkeepers, tailors, shoemakers and tanners.46 The distinct economic profile of Jews and their prominence in the country’s towns and cities was frequently a cause for concern among ethno-nationalist Polish political parties, chief among them the National Democrats (Endecja). Spearheaded by from its founding in 1897, the party and the radical political movements it spawned led public campaigns throughout the interwar period accusing Jews of exploiting the Polish peasantry and preventing Poles from obtaining employment. These claims, along with their persistent accusation that Jews were secretly working to overthrow Poland and place it under Soviet rule, resonated with much of the Catholic Polish clergy and public.47 As elsewhere in eastern Europe, these sentiments—the hallmarks of antisemitism in the region—occasionally escalated into anti-Jewish violence.48 Although initially hostile to the rabble-rousing antisemitic activity of the Polish nationalist right, the Polish government increasingly enacted anti-

45 Hundert, pp.57-78; Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 46 On the economic profile of Jews in interwar Poland, see Joseph Marcus, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919-1939 (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1983), pp.29-122, 211-240, 249-258; Raphael Mahler, Yehude polin ben shte milhamot ‘olam: historyah kalkalit-sotsi’alit le-or ha-statistika (Tel Aviv: Devir,1968). 47 Brian Porter, Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp.303-314. 48 See Joanna Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), pp.69-130; on antisemitism elsewhere in the region, see Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp.102-107, 112-124, 162-169, 183-189, 202-210.

21 Jewish legislation by the late 1930s and did little to quell outbursts of anti-Jewish violence across the country.49 The complex variety of factors that produced anti-Jewish hostility and violence in Poland have been amply documented by historians such as Emanuel Melzer, Celia Heller, Szymon Rudnicki, Jerzy Tomaszewski, Joanna Michlic and others.50 Antisemitic ideology, anti-Jewish violence and the responses of Polish Jews to these phenomena have, in fact, been the near exclusive focus of historians who have sought to analyze the social, political and economic relations between Poles and Jews, both before and after the two world wars. This scholarship mirrors the tendency of historians of eastern Europe to devote their work to exploring the extent to which nationalism and the modern nation- state were responsible for the outbreaks of mass ethnic violence that rocked the region throughout the twentieth century.51 While historical scholarship on Poland correctly underscores the crucial role that antisemitism played in interwar Jewish life, its focus on moments of crisis often leaves the impression that Poles and Jews lived in entirely different spheres whose boundaries were breached only in moments of conflict. The very term “Polish-Jewish relations,” used by these scholars to describe the focus of their work, presumes that “Polish” and “Jewish” were fixed and static terms that clearly separated one group’s ethnic, religious and political sense of self and community from the other. These renditions of life in interwar Poland, however, seem inadequate as a prism through which to analyze both Betar’s use of Polish patriotic culture and the reactions of Polish officials to these performances of Zionist “Polishness.” The interactions between

49 Szymon Rudnicki, “Anti-Jewish Legislation in Interwar Poland” in Robert Blobaum, ed., Antisemitism and its opponents in Modern Poland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp.158-170. 50 Emanuel Melzer, No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry, 1935-1939 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997), p.15-94; Celia Heller, On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), pp.77-142; Szymon Rudnicki, Obóz Narodowo Radykalny: Geneza i działalność (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1985); Jerzy Tomaszewski, “The Role of Jews in Polish Commerce, 1918-1939” in Gutman, Mendelsohn et.al, eds., The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars, pp.141-157; Joanna Michlic, Poland’s Threatening ‘Other’; Antony Polonsky, “Why did they hate Tuwim and Boy So Much? Jews and ‘Artificial Jews’ in the Literary Polemics of the ” in Blobaum, ed., Antisemitism and its Opponents in Modern Poland, pp.189-209. 51 For early iterations of the argument that the interwar “marriage” between nationalism and the nation-state would inherently produce mass ethnic violence, see Hugh Seton Watson, The East European Revolution (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1951), pp.19-22; Hugh Seton Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars 1918-1941 3rd edition (New York: Archon Books, 1962), pp.268-319. See also Zygmunt Baumann, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp.61-62. For a useful introduction to the topic of ethnic violence in Europe, see Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

22 Polish officials, Betar leaders and members brings to mind instead a growing body of scholarship on eastern European nationalism devoted to highlighting the fundamental contingency and fluidity of national loyalties. While building upon the pioneering work of Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, Miroslav Hroch and others who argued that nations were largely modern inventions, more recent scholarship has called into question the presumption that nationalism and national conflict was an organic, inevitable consequence of modernization.52 The work of such scholars as Hillel Kieval, Gary Cohen, Jeremy King and Tara Zahra on the development of national identity in the region that became interwar offers several particularly fruitful observations about the development of nationalism in eastern Europe.53 First, although nationalist activists operating in the Habsburg, Prussian and Russian Empires devoted their efforts to marking national difference, they consistently “crossed over” their imagined national boundaries to converse with rival nationalist activists about what constituted a nation’s characters and goals. Not only did they share a common political language, forged in large part through their common experience with imperial politics. They also frequently read one another’s pamphlets and journals, attended one another’s meetings, and debated together about the boundaries of national belonging. Recent work has also shown that despite the creation of interwar nation-states in eastern Europe, national loyalties often remained fluid among the general population. Nationalism also often competed with

52 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press 1985). Anthony Smith offered an important challenge to the claim that nations were entirely modern inventions. His observation that the term ‘nation’ had valence for centuries prior to the rise of modern nationalism is particularly useful in the case of Jews, who conceived (and were conceived by others) as both a people and religion well before the nineteenth century. See Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (New York: Blackwell, 1986). For a useful introduction to these and other theories of nationalism, see “Introduction” in Geoff Eley, Ronald Suny, eds., Becoming National: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp.3-38. On the Jewish case, see Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995), pp.4-11. 53 Gary Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in , 1861-1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Hillel Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870-1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008); For a useful overview of this approach to nationalism, see “Introduction: Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe” in Pieter Judson and Marsha Rozenblit, eds., Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), pp.1-18.

23 other categories of belonging—such as village, town, clan and religious group—to be the primary marker of individual identity. Furthermore, unlike nationalist activists, who went to great pains to create a coherent and logical national identity, many inhabitants of eastern Europe felt comfortable living with the inherent contradictions that may have appeared when adopting more than one national allegiance. Finally, while ideas about pre-existing linguistic, religious and ethnic differences played a role in how nationalist ideologues constructed the nation, their notions of national identity also shifted based on practical social and political needs. As nationalist activists continually changed their strategies to gain and consolidate power, their definitions of the nation’s members, allies and enemies remained in a constant state of flux. Similar observations are beginning to be made by scholars of the nineteenth century , where Jewish, Ukrainian and Polish nationalist activists drew from common intellectual currents, exchanged ideas with one another, and constantly refashioned their conceptions of nationhood based on the challenges nationalist groups presented to one another, as well as the immediate social, political and economic goals of each national camp.54 Betar’s relationship to Polish patriotism and Polish government officials provides ample proof that these dynamics persisted through the interwar period, despite the claims of many eastern European nationalist movements that their ranks had been consolidated with the rise of the region’s new nation-states. Interactions between Polish government

54 See Serhiy Bilensky, Romantic Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Russian, Polish and Ukrainian Political Imaginations (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). To date, few comparative studies have explored the mutually formative process through which Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish nationalist ideology and culture developed within the Russian Empire. Several works of scholarship, however, take note of many of the observations listed here, including the impact of Russian literature and politics on the development of “minority” in the Empire, as well as the attentiveness of national leaders to conversations taking place in other “national” camps. For the Polish case, see, for example, Andrzej Walicki, “The Paris Lectures of Mickiewicz and Russian Slavophilism” Slavonic and East European Review 46, 106 (1968), pp.155-175; Walicki, Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); David L. Ransel and Bozena Shallcross eds., Polish Encounters, Russian Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005). On in the Russian Empire, see Ralph Lindheim and George S.N. Luckyj, “Introduction” in Lindheim and Luckyj, eds., Towards an Intellectual History of Ukraine: An Anthology of Ukrainian Thought from 1710 to 1995 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp.7-29; Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp.121-133. On the influence of Russian literature and culture on the development of Jewish nationalism, as well as cases of dialogue between Russian and Zionist national activists, see especially Brian Horowitz, Empire Jews: Jewish Nationalism and Acculturation in 19th and Early 20th Century Russia (Bloomington: Slavica, 2009), pp.1-35, 65-85. For an example far closer to the topic of this dissertation, see Israel Kleiner, From Nationalism to Universalism: Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky and the Ukrainian Question (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2000).

24 officials and Betar activists highlight the ways in which the contours of national identity continued to be forged with social, economic and political alliances in mind. They also underscore just how tenuous and tentative these definitions of nationhood could be. While Betar’s members, leaders and Polish government officials all believed in the power of “Polskość,” or “Polishness,” to shape the political identities of young Zionist Jews, there was little consensus as to what acting “Polish” actually meant and the extent to which Jews could adopt the qualities associated with ‘Polskość.’ Instead, Betar’s members, leaders and Polish government officials each cultivated their own notions of what constituted the ideal Pole and the extent to which Jews could adopt the qualities of “Polskość.” Throughout the dissertation, I use interactions between Betar’s members, leaders and Polish government officials, as well as their efforts to determine the boundaries of Polishness, as a window into the complex dynamics that shaped the politics of nationality in interwar Poland as well as the relationship between Polish Jews and Catholic Poles. By examining the disparate perspectives of these three groups, I move away from the attempts of other scholars to deduce a fixed pattern of “Polish-Jewish relations.” Instead, my dissertation highlights how Polish Jews and Catholic Poles, like other ethno-religious groups in the region, were constantly negotiating the social and political boundaries that defined how they imagined each other, and themselves. I also call into question the assumption that all Jews in Poland who adopted Zionism as a political credo firmly believed that their future, and that of the entire Jewish nation, lay in their rejection of the “diaspora” and their impending immigration to Palestine. The dissertation instead highlights how Zionists in Poland could paradoxically view their public declarations to build a Jewish homeland in Mandate Palestine as a mode of acculturation, a way in which to encourage their non-Jewish neighbors to view them as equal citizens of the Polish state.55 In making these arguments, I provide a detailed portrait of patterns of Polish-Jewish acculturation in the interwar period, a process that is only beginning to be the subject of scholarly analysis.56

55 For an example of this process outside of Poland, see Tatjana Lichtenstein “Making Jews at Home: Jewish Nationalism in the Bohemian Lands, 1918-1938” (Ph.D dissertation, University of Toronto 2009) 56 On “Polishness” and Jewish identity in interwar Poland, see Sean Martin, Jewish Life in Cracow1918- 1939 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2004); Katrin Steffen, Jüdische Polonität: Ethnizität und Nation im Spiegel der polnischsprachigen jüdischen Presse, 1918-1939 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004);

25 My dissertation’s attention to the multiple and often discordant voices of both Jewish and non-Jewish political actors within Betar’s orbit marks another departure from the ways in which most historians have written about Jewish political activity in interwar Poland. Despite the pioneering work of Ezra Mendelsohn and Emanuel Melzer, who set their comparative analyses of interwar Jewish political parties within the larger context of developments within Polish politics, most studies of Polish Jewish political movements tend to only examine political activity among Polish Jews.57 In contrast, my dissertation uses its discussion of Jewish politics as a way in which to illuminate broader political developments in the country, including the interactions between the Sanacja government and Poland’s national minorities. In some respects, this study complements the work of Mendelsohn and Melzer by filling in a chronological gap left between their studies. The dissertation, however, departs from their work in two crucial ways. First, rather than rely solely upon pamphlets and newspapers produced in the country’s largest cities—Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź and Lwów—the dissertation draws upon hundreds of interwar periodicals in Yiddish, Polish and Hebrew from towns and cities across the country. Instead of providing a seamless and coherent narrative of ideological development from the “centers” of Jewish metropolises into the “peripheries” of Jewish towns and villages, these sources point instead to the ways in which local leaders served as crucial players in the act of ideological construction and interpretation. Second, instead of relying solely upon newspaper publications produced by Jewish political parties, I also consider Polish government reports from towns and cities across the country. Taking inspiration from the

Anna Landau-Czajka, Syn będzie Lech…Asymilacja Żydów w Polsce międzywojennej (Warszawa: Neriton, 2006). 57 Melzer, No Way Out; Ezra Mendelssohn, Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years 1915-1926 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). For examples of these approaches, see Bernard K. Johnpoll, The Politics of Futility: The General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917-1943 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967); Itzik Nakhmen Gottesman, Defining the Yiddish Nation: The Jewish Folklorists of Poland (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003); Emanuel Nowogrodzki, The Jewish Labor Bund in Poland, 1915-1939: From its Emergence as an Independent until the beginning of World War II (Rockville: Shengold, 2001); Dina Stern, Bene Akiva Lodz: Le-diokana shel tenuat no-ar be-terem shoah (Jerusalem: R. Mas, 1996); Joseph Elichai, Tenu’at ha-mizrahi be-Polin ha-kongresa’it, 1916-1927 (Tel Aviv: Moreshet, 1993); Jack Jacobs, Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009). Important exceptions to this trend are Gertrud Pickhan, Gegen den Strom: Der Allgemeine Jüdische Arbeiterbund “Bund” in Polen, 1918-1939 (: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001); Andrzej Walicki, Ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce w latach 1926-1930 (Łódź: Ibidem, 2005) and Kalman Weiser, Jewish People, Yiddish Nation: Noah Prylucki and the Folkists in Poland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011).

26 work of Laurence Weinbaum, who some three decades ago mined Poland’s Foreign Ministry archives for information about negotiations in the late 1930s between the Polish government and the Revisionist movement concerning Jewish emigration from Poland to Palestine, I spent several months sifting through provincial and state archives in regions that were part of interwar Poland.58 What I found were thousands of weekly and monthly reports written by Polish police and military officials who had been asked to detail the political activities of Jews and other national minorities. These detailed reports are certainly not without their biases, and cannot be read as unvarnished accounts of Polish Jewish politics. Nonetheless, they provide useful information to historians. The reports map the locations in which political activity was conducted by both Jewish and non- Jewish organizations. They also reveal the ways in which local Polish authorities viewed Betar in relation to other political movements under their watch. These sources illuminate the complex network of institutions in the emerging Polish state that were designed to prescribe and institute policy. Instead of presenting a portrait of a centralized political system that enforced a coherent policy, these sources point instead to how a variety of factors—from regional differences to the whims of local political officials—could influence the ways in which the Sanacja’s mandates were interpreted and implemented. By highlighting these processes, my dissertation compliments the work of Timothy Snyder and others on the regional variations of political rule in interwar Poland.59

Youth and the Limits of Modern Jewish Politics

Just as Betar’s leaders frequently changed their ideas about Zionist “Polskość” to complement their political agenda, so too did they craft definitions of “youth” that were flexible enough to serve to their ever-changing social and political goals. No historical investigation of youth movement culture can be complete without paying attention to how youth movement activists in the interwar period imagined “youth” in the first place.

58 Laurence Weinbaum, A Marriage of Convenience: The New Zionist Organization and the Polish Government, 1936-1939 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1993) 59 See Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 23-170; Włodzimierz Mędrzecki, Województwo wołyńskie 1921-1939: elementy przemian cywilizacyjnych, społecznych i politycznych (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1988), and more recently, Kathryn Ward Ciancia, “Poland’s Wild East: Imagined Landscapes and Everyday Life in the Volhynian Borderlands, 1918-1939” (Ph.D dissertation, Stanford University, 2011).

27 Despite the explosion of interest in the history of childhood and generational conflict in the Sixties and Seventies—largely stimulated by the student movements of the period— the notion that “youth” is a meaningful category of historical analysis, like gender, race or class, has yet to gain widespread recognition among historians.60 The now-flourishing field of gender history provides a useful model for the interpretive power that the study of “youth” possesses for historians of Jews in the modern world. In their pioneering work on how ideas about the nature of Jewish men and women evolved over time, historians such as Marion Kaplan, Chava Weissler and Paula Hyman cast an entirely new light on topics that had long been at the center of historical inquiry for historians of modern Jewish life, including the economic profile of Jews, patterns of acculturation, antisemitism and political affiliation.61 My dissertation demonstrates that the study of “youth” can be equally fruitful. Looking at how the terms “young” and “old”, “adult” and “child” were constructed and contested over the course of time can change the way in which historians analyze communal dynamics long considered the key to understanding Jewish encounters with modernity. This dissertation pays particular attention to how the study of youth movements can reveal much about the architecture of Polish Jewish political culture. Through close readings of sources designed for the young members of political movements—from pamphlets intended to make ideology legible to children, to curricula for Betar instructors on how to make the singing, playing, dancing, and marching of their members explicitly political acts—I reconstruct the overlooked popular culture through which the vast

60 The work of Philippe Ariès helped to stimulate a wave of scholarship—largely crticial of his work—on concepts of childhood. See Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life Robert Baldick, trans. (London: Cape, 1962); Adrian Wilson, “The Infancy of the History of Childhood: An Appaisal of Philippe Aries,” History and Theory 19/1 (1980), pp. 132-53, as well as Kathleen Alaimo. "Review Essay: Childhood and Adolescence in Modern European History" Journal of Social History 24, 3 (1991): pp. 591- 601. On scholarship from this period examining the concept of “generations,” see Norman Ryder, “The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change” American Sociological Review 30 (1965), pp.848-61; S.N. Eisenstadt, “Archetypal Patterns of Youth” in Erik Erickson, Youth: Change and Challenge (New York: John Wiley, 1963), pp.3-46; Philip Abrams, “Rites de Passage: The Conflict of Generations in Industrial Society” Journal of Contemporary History 5,1 (1970), pp.175-190; Anthony Esler, ed., The Youth Revolution: The Conflict of Generations in Modern History (Lexington: Heath, 1974). 61 See Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998); Marion Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995).

28 majority of Polish Jews encountered and experienced politics. By examining the frustrations of youth movement leaders, along with their continuous attempts to readjust their blueprints for performing ideology, I also hope to highlight the dynamic interplay between ideology and practice that shaped interwar Poland’s Jewish politics. This approach departs from the tendency of some scholars to presume that Poland’s Jewish religious and political leaders between the two world wars were fighting for ideologies formulated years beforehand, and that these positions remained static and entrenched throughout the period.62 In contrast, my attention to youth politics highlights how life in interwar Poland constantly required and produced innovative ways of rethinking the contours of Jewish identity. My work also underscores the pivotal role that definitions of “youth” and “generationhood” played in the modern Jewish political arena between the two world wars. Interwar Poland was by no means the first time or place in which political activists in Europe, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, turned their attention towards youth. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, imperial armies, school reformers, nationalist activists and religious authorities across the continent blended recreation with pedagogy, aiming to mould young people into ideal citizens, patriots, and in some cases, revolutionaries.63 So too did they see tremendous power in using longstanding ideas about the “nature” of youth—from their virility, enthusiasm, and idealism to their recklessness and impulsiveness—as a way to promote their causes. By the turn of the twentieth century, the youth movement was emerging in Western Europe as one of fastest

62 See, for example, Heller, pp.249-294; Harry Rabinowicz, The Legacy of Polish Jewry: A History of Polish Jews in the Inter-war Years (New York: Y. Yoseloff, 1965); Isaac Lewin, “The Political History of Polish Jewry, 1918-1919” in Levin and Nahum Michael Gelber, A History of Polish Jewry During the Revival of Poland (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1990), pp.5-220. 63 There is a vast literature on this topic for Britain, France and Germany. For a survey text on these social reform movements, see John Gillis, Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1770-Present (New York: Academic Press, 1974), pp.95-183. On education, see Mary Jo Maynes, Schooling in Western Europe: A Social History (Albany: State University of New York, 1985). On France, see, for example, Alaimo, Kathleen, “Shaping Adolescence in the Popular Milieu: Social Policy, Reformers, and French Youth, 1870-1920” Journal of Family History 17, 4 (1992), pp.419-438. On Germany, Detlev Peukert, Grenzen der Sozialdisziplinierung: Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Jugendfürsorge von 1878 bis 1932 (Köln: Bund, 1986); Rainer Elkar, “The Battle for the Young: Mobilizing young people in Wilhemine Germany” in Mark Roseman, ed., Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany, 1770-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.92-104; Derek Linton, Who Has the Youth, Has the Future: The Campaign to Save Young Workers in Imperial Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). On Britain, see John Gillis, “The Evolution of Juvenile Delinquency in England, 1890-1914” Past and Present 67 (1975), pp.96-126.

29 growing organizational models for social activists from nearly every walk of life who sought to shape young people’s political and religious lives. On the eve of the First World War, Germany’s Wandervogel, with their calls for bourgeois urban youth to “return to nature” and liberate themselves from the excesses of modern life, boasted twenty-five thousand members; in France, youth movements run by Catholic organizations had over seventy-five thousand members; and the British Empire’s Boy Scout movement, with its emphasis on using outdoor adventure to instill patriotism, counted over one hundred and twenty-eight thousand members.64 Despite these precedents, the First World War radically transformed the way in which political activists thought about the roles that young people could play in achieving political success. The mass military mobilization of millions of young men across Europe had proven just how pivotal young people could be in shaping the political destinies of the continent.65 No less important was the impact of the creation of new nation-states and the introduction of mass political enfranchisement within them. Increased attention to youth emerged not merely because political activists saw children as future voters. Drawing upon ideas about the “masses” cultivated at the turn of the century, politicians increasingly came to believe that the only way to gain power was to appeal to the political instincts of “ordinary” citizens, who privileged emotion over reason and form over content. In their view, power would be found not in the journals, newspapers and cafes of the educated elite, but rather on the street, where they would stage mass public events whose success would rest on their theatricality.66 More than ever, young people

64 David Pomfret, “Youth Movements in Europe” in Peter N. Stearns, ed., Encyclopedia of the Modern World, vol. 8 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp.139-142. On the Wandervogel, see Walter Laqueur’s classic study, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (New York: Basic Books, 1962). On French Catholic youth organizations, see Susan B. Whitney, Mobilizing Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). On the Boy Scouts in Britain, see John Springhall Youth, Empire and Society: A Social History of British Youth Movements, 1883-1940 (Hamden: Archon Books, 1977). 65 Susan B. Whitney, Mobilizing Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), pp.17-29; Andrew Donson, Youth in a Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism and Authority in Germany, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979). 66 The text most frequently cited in the interwar period on the value of crowd psychology and was Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1895). See Robert Nye, The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave Le Bon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic (London: Sage Publications, 1975); Corey Ross, “Mass Politics and the Techniques of Leadership: The Promise and Perils of Propaganda in Weimar Germany” Modern German History, Vol. 24,2 (2006) pp.184-211; Mariel

30 came to be seen as pivotal players in the performance and acquisition of power. Political leaders hoped that the elaborate public rituals of their youth movements, from parading in the street to singing in public squares, would put on display the virility of their ideological platform, and in doing so, appeal to the emotional ‘instincts’ of potential political supporters in the crowds.67 As political leaders across Europe made harnessing the perceived power of youth a top priority, youth movement members were told that they had the power to shape the political destinies of their adult patron organizations. Paradoxically, political leaders hoped that their promises of youth empowerment would provide them with unprecedented opportunities to shape and control the attitudes and behaviors of young people. Against this backdrop, interwar Polish Jewish organizations across the political spectrum founded youth movements. The pioneering movements He-Halutz (est. 1917), Frayhayt (1920) and Gordonia (1925), for example, were under the supervision of the Labor Zionist Movement; the Jewish Labor Bund had established its own youth movement, Tsukunft, in 1915; and even the Orthodox Agudas Yisroel party, whose mandate was to defend traditional Jewish interests, formed their own youth movements and incorporated elements of youth movement culture into their programs.68 Jewish youth movements proliferated throughout Poland; even in small towns with several thousand inhabitants, it would not be uncommon to find several different Jewish youth movements. By the mid-1930s, interwar Jewish political leaders were claiming that well over one

Grant, Propaganda and the Role of the State in Interwar Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Valerie Holman and Debra Kelly, eds., France at War in the Twentieth Century: Myth, Metaphor and Propaganda (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000); Jeffrey Verhey, “Some Lessons of the War: The Discourse on Propaganda and Public Opinion in Germany in the 1920s” in Bernd Hueppauf, ed., Violence and the Modern Condition (: Walter de Gruyter, 1997, pp.99-118. 67 See David M. Pomfret, “Lionized and Toothless: Young People and Urban Politics in Britain and France, 1918-1940” in Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried, eds., European Cities, Youth and the Public Sphere in the Twentieth Century (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2005), pp.27-42. 68 For an broad overview of these movements, see Moshe Kligsberg, “Di yidishe yugnt-bavegung in poyln tsvishn beyde velt milkhomes” in Joshua Fishman, ed., Shtudies vegn yidn in poyln 1919-1939: di tsvishnsphil fun sotsiale, ekonomishe un politishe faktorn inem kampfn fun a minoritet far kiem (New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1974), pp. 137-228. For individual histories of several of these movements, see Israel Oppenheim, Tenuat he-halutz be-Polin, 1929-1939 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982); Jacob Hertz, Di geshikhte fun a yugnt: der kleyner yugnt-bund tsukunft in poyln (New York: Unzer Tsayt, 1946); Gershon Bacon, The Politics of Tradition: in Poland, 1916-1939 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996), pp.118-141.

31 hundred and thirty thousand Jews belonged to a youth movement.69 While these claims were no doubt inflated, they nonetheless underscore the importance of youth movements in Polish Jewish political life. Yet in the 1930s, Polish Jewish observers, like others across Europe, increasingly argued that the formation of youth movements had failed to deliver the intended results, and even worse, had created a welter of problems for the adult patrons of youth movement organizations. The architects of interwar youth movements faced several challenges. It was one thing to attract members, but quite another to successfully indoctrinate them. Youth movement activists from across the political spectrum struggled to convince their members to carry out their ideological programs, let alone understand them. Alongside their concerns about the indifference of their members to the political nature of their recreational programs, youth movement leaders simultaneously worried that those who did claim complete fealty to the movement’s political ideology were interpreting its tenets in ways that radically departed from the meanings invested in them by adults. Particularly worrisome for many Jewish observers was the tendency of their youth movements to push for more radical measures, including the use of violence against their opponents. Rather than simply parroting the political program and practices of their adult patron organizations, youth movements, in their view, threatened to reinterpret their parent party’s tenets, and in doing so, radicalize modern Jewish politics.

69 The tendency of leaders to inflate their membership numbers is only one of the challenges faced by historians seeking to gain an accurate estimate of youth movement membership. Movements conducted membership counts at differing times; it is thus difficult to find, for example, the membership numbers for all major Polish Jewish youth movements in one particular year. Polish Jewish adolescents also often shifted from one organization to another, so membership numbers were constantly in flux. I am basing the estimate provided above on numbers published in youth movement journals by Betar, Ha-shomer ha-tsair, Ha-shomer ha-tsioni, Frayhayt-dror, Tse’irei agudat yisrael, Tsukunft, Gordonia, Bene Akiva and Yugnt Poalei Tsiyon between 1929 and 1935. For Tsukunft’s proclaimed numbers in 1933 (10 000), see “Der yugnt-bund ‘tsukunft’ oyfn 4-tn tsuzamenfar fun Bund” Yugnt veker 15 January 1933, p.3; for Betar in 1933 (33 422), see Isaac Remba, Shnatayim: din ve-heshbon shel netsivut betar be-polin mishnot 5692- 5693 (Warsaw: Futura, 1934), p.3; For Ha-tsa’ir in 1933 (30 226), see “Misparim” in Ha- shomer Ha-tsa’ir: iton ha-bogrim shel histradrut Ha-shomer Ha-tsa’ir (February 1934), p.44; For Ha’noar Ha-tsioni in 1935 (approx. 20 000), see K. Rosenblatt, “Ha-noar Hacijoni polski w cyfrach” Hanoar hacijoni, vol. 9, 15 April 1935, pp.269-277; For Bene Akiva in 1933 (approx. 20 000), see Baruch Yechieli, Akiva: tenuat no’ar tsiyonit-klalit: tsemihata, hitpathutah u-lehimatah bi-shenot ha-sho’ah (Tel Aviv: Moreshet, 1988), p.76; For Gordonia in 1930 (approx. 7000), see Eli Tzur, “Gordonia” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, pp. 620-621; for Tse’irei Agudat Yisrael in 1931 (approximately 10 000), see Gershon Bacon, The Politics of Tradition, p. 135; for Frayhayt-Dror in 1933 (approximately 10 000), see Eli Tzur, “Dror” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, pp.429-430; for “Yugnt” in the early 1930s (10 000), see Bina Garancaska-Kadri, Di Linke poaley-tsiyon in poyln biz der tsveyter velt-milkhome (Tel Aviv: I.L. Peretz Publishing,1995), p.329.

32 Fears about the rise of political extremism within Polish Jewish communities propelled constant conversations among Jewish political activists in the 1930s about a “conflict of generations” within their movements, and prompted many to reassess the role of youth in modern Jewish politics.70 Throughout the dissertation, I examine how Revisionist leaders thought about the prospects and pitfalls of using youth in modern politics. I highlight how Revisionist leaders constantly drew upon and promoted ideas about the nature of youth in an effort to convince the Polish Jewish public that their increasingly authoritarian behavior was the only mode of leadership available to Zionist leaders in the 1930s. I also examine how the deliberately ambiguous age limits of Betar, which blurred the boundaries between “youth” and “adult,” allowed the movement, like other authoritarian movements throughout interwar Europe, to employ dictatorial tactics without publicly abandoning their claim to be democratic. Finally, I explore how Jabotinsky and other Betar leaders wrestled with the unforeseen consequences of the movement’s ambiguous constructions of youth.

* This dissertation is divided into four chapters. The first two chapters explore the formation of the Zionist Right between 1922 and 1931. Chapter One examines the pivotal role that Polish patriotic culture played in the Revisionist movement’s early ideological development. It demonstrates how the experiences of the Revisionist leadership during their initial campaigning in Poland led them to place authoritarian policies and practices at the center of their program, including the cult of the leader, a fierce opposition to socialism, and the demand that military values pervade public and private life. It also chronicles the Revisionist movement’s “discovery” of youth, and examines why Revisionist leaders came to believe that forming a youth movement would be the key to their success. The chapter culminates with a description of Betar’s official founding in Poland. Chapter Two examines the attempts of Betar’s early leaders to determine the extent to which their cultural blueprints for the youth movement would endorse the

70 See especially Max Weinreich, Der veg tsu unzer yugnt: yesoydes, metodn, problemen fun yidishn yugnt forshung (Wilno: Drukarnia D. Krejensa, 1935), pp.9-12, 169-281.

33 attitudes and behaviors promoted by Fascist Italy. Exploring how these debates played out in the efforts of Betar leaders to create an “authentically” Zionist and Jewish youth movement culture, the chapter elucidates why it was that Betar’s leaders had good reason to call themselves “fascists,” as many of them did in the late 1920s. The remaining chapters of the dissertation chart Betar’s emergence as a mass youth movement between 1931 and 1935. They explore the extent to which Betar’s initial ideological and cultural program was performed, reformed and reinvented by the youth movement’s members. Chapter Three focuses on Betar’s construction and performance of a distinct Zionist “Polishness” through the participation of its members in Polish national ceremonies, their integration of Polish patriotic culture into their own rituals, and their contact with Polish government officials. It uses the interactions between Betar’s members, leaders and Polish government officials as a window into the complex dynamics that shaped relationships between Polish Jews and Catholic Poles in the interwar period. It also highlights how Polish Jews created innovative ways in which to imagine the relationship between “diaspora” and “homeland” that allowed them to identify as both Zionists and patriots of Poland. The final chapter of the dissertation explores the pivotal role that definitions of “youth” and “generationhood” played in Betar’s politics. Beginning in 1931, it examines how the movement used its constructions of who “youth” were and how they were expected to behave in to justify its increasingly authoritarian practices, even as it claimed to remain democratic in nature. The chapter then follows Betar through 1935, and explores how the organization’s leaders, faced with the rise of and increasing political violence between Jewish youth movements, came to question both their definitions of youth and their blueprints for the youth movement’s culture. The conclusion of my dissertation examines how developments within Poland’s Zionist Right until 1935 served as a template for how Jabotinsky as well as Betar’s leaders responded to an array of events that would later unfold in Mandate Palestine. This includes the Arab Revolt of 1936 and the growth of the Revisionist-affiliated underground terrorist network called the National Military Organization, known by its acronym, the . The dissertation’s conclusion brings into focus an argument that can be traced throughout the dissertation—that Poland’s Zionist politics had a decisive

34 impact on developments in Mandate Palestine’s Jewish community, described by Zionists at the time as the Yishuv, the “settlement.” This argument runs up against the work of historians of Zionism who have focused almost exclusively on the Yishuv’s Zionist leaders, along with its Jewish inhabitants, to explain the development of interwar Zionism and the origins of the state of Israel.71 One of the results of this approach has been that these historians have argued that it was the “native born generation” of Jews in Palestine, reacting to the Arab Revolt of 1936, who led the way in convincing the Zionist movement at large to promote and legitimize a military solution to the conflict between Mandate Palestine’s Arab inhabitants and the territory’s growing Jewish population.72 Not only does this dissertation set the origins of Israeli militarism further back in time; it locates its birthplace in Poland. Ultimately, the dissertation provides a case study of how the development of Zionism was inextricably bound to particular national political cultures developing simultaneously across interwar Europe, despite the movement’s claim that it transcended ‘diasporic’ local, regional and national influences.73 While Zionist efforts in Palestine, and the reactions they provoked among the country’s Arab majority, were crucial to the development of Zionist ideology, the influence of Poland was often no less decisive.

71 For overviews of interwar Zionism and the Yishuv that take this approach, see Moshe Lissak and Zohar Shavit, eds., Toldot ha-yishuv ha-yehudi be-erets yisrael me-az ha-‘ ha-rishonah vol. 3.(Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1998); Ze’ev Tshor, Shorashei ha-politika ha-israelit ( Ham’uchad: Ben Gurion University,1987). Most studies on Yishuv politics focus on individual parties, with a particular emphasis on the Labor Zionist camp. See Yonatan Shapira, Ahdut ha-‘avodah ha-historit: ‘otsamo shel ‘irgun politi (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1975); Ze’ev Tshor, Ba-derekh le-hanhagat ha-yishuv: ha- be-reshita (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Tsvi, 1981); Shavit, Me-rov le-medina; Anita Shapira, Ha ma-avak ha-nihzav: avoda ivrit, 1929-1939 (Tel Aviv: , 1977); Ya’akov Goldshtein, Mifleget po’ale erets yisrael: gormim le-hakamatah (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1975); Goldshtein, Ba-derekh le-hegemonyah: , hitgabshut mediniyuta, 1930-1936 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1980). 72 Uri Ben Eliezer, The Making of Israeli Militarism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp.ix- 50. See also Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force William Templer trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp.219-370; Ya’akov N. Goldstein, From Fighters to Soldiers: How the Israeli Defense Forces Began (Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 1998); Yo’ Gelber, “Hitpathut kokho ha-tsva’i shel ha’yishuv” in Moshe Lissak and Zohar Shavit, eds., Toldot ha-yishuv ha-yehudi be- erets yisrael, pp.625-632. 73 On this point, not just for the Zionist case, see Amos Funkenstein, “The Dialectics of Assimilation” Jewish Social Studies 1,2 (1995), pp. 10-11. For a recent scholarly collection aiming to explore the impact of local contexts outside of Mandate Palestine on the development of Zionism prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, see Alon Gal ed., Ha-Tsiyonut la-ezoreha: hebetim ge’o-tarbutiyim vols. 1-3 (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2010).

35 It is thus towards Warsaw, and not towards Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, that we now turn to begin exploring the rise of the Zionist Right.

36 CHAPTER ONE JABOTINSKY ENCOUNTERS POLISH JEWISH YOUTH

When the music began the vast concourse stood immobile.... The beardless priest turned pale and seemed to submerge his eyes in those of the dancers, which were fixed responsively on him …all the repressed fervor of the crowd seemed to concentrate within his breast till it threatened to choke him. Suddenly, with a rapid, almost inconspicuous movement, the priest raised his baton, and all the white figures in the square sank down on the left knee and threw the right arm towards heaven --a single movement, a single, abrupt, murmurous harmony.... Samson left the place profoundly thoughtful. He could not have given words to his thought, but he had a feeling that here, in this spectacle of thousands obeying a single will, he had caught a glimpse of the great secret of politically minded peoples.

-Vladimir Jabotinsky, Samson the Nazarite (1926)

On Thursday, February 17, 1927, the train that was carrying Vladimir Jabotinsky arrived at six o’clock in the morning in Dworzec Wideński, a vast, palatial train station in the heart of Warsaw. Crowds of the city’s Jews had begun to fill the platform an hour-and-a-half beforehand.1 By the time he arrived, he later recalled to his wife, Anya, “the station was wall-to-wall with crowds of people.” 2 Over the course of five weeks, as he wound his way through Central Poland and , delivering speech after speech in Włocławek, Sowiniec, Łódź, Kraków and Lwów, Jabotinsky reported the same scenario to his wife: “The trip is continuing as it began—the masses await at the train stations, the halls are full, and it seems to me like there is success.”3 His sense of confidence was magnified by the conspicuous presence of young Polish Jews among his supporters. Many of these young people were members of three youth movements, each of which had proclaimed him to be their leader. Jabotinsky’s brief references to adult Revisionist organizations, which he characterized as fledgling and ineffective, paled in comparison to his descriptions of the throngs of young Jews following his every move.4 While all he could report to a friend about Białystok’s adult Revisionist organization was that they were “strange,” he enthused that “on the streets, there are thousands of youth screaming “Long Live Jabotinsky!”5 In Wilno, a city in northeastern Poland, he recalled

1 “Powitanie Żabotyńskiego w Warszawie,” Dziennik Warszawski 18 February 1927, p. 4 2 Vladimir Jabotinsky, letter to Anya Jabotinsky, 19 February 1927 in Daniel Carpi, ed., Igrot Ze’ev Jabotinsky, vol. 5, p. 141. 3 Ibid, 10 March 1927, p. 153. 4 Jabotinsky to Jacobi, 22 March 1927, Ibid., p. 160; Jabotinsky to Aharon Zvi Propes, 25 March 1927, p. 161. 5 Ibid, 21 March 1927, p. 159.

37 how “over the course of a long hour, the masses paraded me through the streets. Masses of youth shouted, ‘Hooray!’”6 The excitement that Jabotinsky expressed to friends and family about young Polish Jews would have been a welcome break from the tortured letters he had sent them in the previous months. Ever since Jabotinsky founded the Revisionist movement in April 1925, they had received numerous letters complaining of the movement’s financial woes and inability to recruit members. If the letters’ recipients were indeed relieved, they would have been all the more surprised by Jabotinsky’s enthusiasm for Polish Jewish youth. Despite the fact that Poland was home to Europe’s largest concentration of Jews, both Revisionist party protocols and Jabotinsky’s letters from 1925 to 1927 rarely made reference to the country.7 Youth were similarly on the fringes of the Revisionist movement’s political map; until Jabotinsky’s arrival in Poland, neither he, nor any of the members of the Revisionist Executive in Paris, had undertaken any serious initiatives to develop youth movements. Although Jewish youth and Polish Jewry were deemed by Jabotinsky and other members of the Revisionist Executive to be of marginal importance before the winter of 1927, one year later, they were considered the movement’s key constituencies. Why were Polish Jews and youth movements ignored by the Revisionist movement until 1927, and what was it about them that suddenly made them so compelling? Answers to these questions were hinted at in a letter sent by Jabotinsky to his wife one week into his trip. He claimed that he was not only encountering a new group of potential constituents, but a mode of political behavior that differed dramatically from his own: There is something unpleasant—I’ve felt it for some time now, and now I’m beginning to be frightened by it…they are beginning to transform me into a myth: “the man who”…My chubby body and my bald spot leave no impression…Worst of all, this myth is beginning to transform into a legend about a “leader”…I fear, more and more, that precisely this will bring us to “power”…not a way of thought, and not a program, but rather panic about the lack of success in Palestine, and the stupid legend about the new rebbe [a Hasidic Jewish ] who performs miracles. Even ruling through accepted ways is repulsive enough…And already, there is nothing to be done…And on the other hand, perhaps all this will increase our chances.8

6 Ibid, p. 158. 7 See pp. 53-54 of this chapter. 8 Vladimir Jabotinsky to Anya Jabotinsky, 27 February 1927 in Igrot vol. 4., p. 159.

38 There was, indeed, much that separated Jabotinsky from the Polish Jews whom he described. Raised by his mother and sister in the cosmopolitan port city of , educated in one of the city’s finest Russian-language gymnasia, and later in Swiss and Italian universities, the young Jabotinsky had far more in common with acculturated bourgeois Jews in central and Western Europe, or even with the non-Jewish literati of Russia’s urban centers, than he did with the mostly Yiddish-speaking, traditional and impoverished Jews of Poland. With his dark, widely set and slightly slanted eyes, prominent forehead, olive skin and short, stocky stature, even Jabotinsky’s appearance was read by both opponents and admirers alike as distinctly ‘goyish,’ that is, non-Jewish. At the same time, however, Jabotinsky’s letter to his wife is as remarkable for what it obscures, and even distorts, as it is for what it reveals about Jabotinsky. From the very beginning of his political career, Jabotinsky understood and drew upon the power of myth, emotion and performance to gain political power. Even his fiercest opponents in the Zionist world agreed: Jabotinsky was the most talented political propagandist among them.9 There was something spellbinding, even magnetic about him. His admirers described his speeches as the work of a magician: no other Zionist leader, they recalled, could manage to deliver speeches that could be as vivid, brash, passionate and self- assured. He was no less famous for the elegant style in which he spoke: his Odessan Russian and Germanic Yiddish lent him an almost foreign, aristocratic aura. In the mid-1920s, however, Jabotinsky preferred to attribute his political achievements to the intellectual dexterity and integrity he exhibited in his journalism. In his view, myths and slogans could serve as the handmaidens of modern politics, but journalism and public debate would lay the foundation for political success. It was not surprising, then, that Jabotinsky’s early recruitment efforts for the Revisionist movement focused exclusively on members of the Jewish intelligentsia—whether Russian émigrés in Paris, university students in or “Western” educated journalists and politicians in Salonika. In Jabotinsky’s imagination, Polish Jews were of an entirely different breed. His 1927 letter asserted that the political behaviors of Polish Jewish youth were propelled

9 See, for example, Arther Koestler, Arrow in the Blue: An Autobiography (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952), p.115-120; , Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann (New York: Harper, 1949), pp.167-168; Joseph Schechtman, Rebel and Statesmen: The Vladimir Jabotinsky Story (New York: T. Yoseloff, 1956), p.97, 145; Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York: Random House, 1972), p.339; Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle, p.151.

39 by their appetite for myths, sensations and hero-worship. By likening politically active Polish Jewish youth to supplicants of rebbes, the spiritual wonder-workers and leaders of the Hasidic movement, the devoutly secular Jabotinsky branded them as proponents of a traditional, “backwards” past. There was something deeply ironic about his depiction of their political behavior as a relic of “traditional” Jewish behavior. The three youth movements that Jabotinsky encountered in Poland, named Haszachar, Ha-Szomer Ha-Le’umi/Ha-Tahor and Żydowski Skaut/Menorah were, in fact, a product of the new and thriving youth movement culture of interwar Europe. A political practice that emphasized journalistic output and public debates was being replaced by a culture that favored myths, slogans, cults of leadership and rituals that aimed to shape both public and private lives—from modes of speaking and thinking to ways of dressing and marching.10 Youth movement politics emerged as political leaders across Europe, in the wake of the war, increasingly believed that the mark of successful political leadership lay in the ability to cultivate and sustain a mass popular following. Their campaigns to court support drew upon a growing literature about mass psychology, which presumed that the political choices of the “masses” were guided by primitive emotion rather than reason, a preference for form over content, and a desire for a strong leader.11 The attitudes and behaviors of the three proto-Revisionist youth movements that Jabotinsky encountered during his visit also took inspiration from non-socialist Polish patriotic movements, in particular, the Polish scouting movement [Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego, ZHP], which counted over one hundred thousand members in the 1930s. These movements venerated militarism,

10 While a comparative monograph on youth movements throughout interwar Europe has yet to be produced, there have recently been some excellent monographs that describe the distinct contours of political youth mobilization in interwar Europe. See Tahra Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), David Pomfret, "Lionised and Toothless: Young People and Urban Politics in Britain and France," European Cities, Youth and the Public Sphere in the Twentieth Century ed. Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried (London: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 27-42, Susan Whitney, Mobilizing Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). 11 Corey Ross, “Mass Politics and the Techniques of Leadership: The Promise and Perils of Propaganda in Weimar Germany” Modern German History, Vol. 24,2 (2006) pp.184-211, Mariel Grant, Propaganda and the Role of the State in Interwar Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), Valerie Holman and Debra Kelly, eds., France at War in the Twentieth Century: Myth, Metaphor and Propaganda (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), Jeffrey Verhey, “Some Lessons of the War: The Discourse on Propaganda and Public Opinion in Germany in the 1920s” in Bernd Hueppauf, ed., Violence and the Modern Condition (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997, pp.99-118).

40 vehemently rejected socialism and called for the subordination of individual interests to the will of the nation. That Jabotinsky was well aware of the power of these features of Polish political culture was made clear in the months that followed: following his trip to Poland, these three political practices became central features of the Revisionist program. Indeed, long before these changes were implemented, Jabotinsky’s letter to his wife made clear that there was something seductive about the prospect of cultivating the political styles associated with Polish nationalist youth movement culture. Although Jabotinsky had long called for Jewish youth to learn skills of self-defense, and had expressed occasional critiques of socialism, his colleagues in the Revisionist party in Paris initially attempted to minimize these impulses in the party program. Poland provided Jabotinsky with the opportunity not only to reintroduce his calls for the militarization of youth and his critiques of socialism, but also to amplify them and make them the core features of the Revisionist party’s program. This chapter examines how Jabotinsky’s encounter with Polish Jewish youth, Polish Jews and Polish political culture played a decisive role in how he conceived of both his role as a leader and the mode of politics that would bring the Revisionist movement to power. It begins by exploring Jabotinsky’s shifting perceptions of the value of youth as a political force, and illuminates the ideological ambiguity of the Revisionist movement in its first two years of existence. The chapter then shows how the political culture of Polish Jewish youth movements, which itself drew upon Polish nationalist culture, left a deep imprint on the Revisionist program. Many of the features that marked Revisionism as a variant of right-wing European nationalism came from the movement’s integration of trends that had been cultivated among Jews in Poland, particularly among the youth movements that would later become Betar. In making these arguments, this chapter departs from previous scholarship on the Revisionist movement in several significant ways. It rejects the tendency of scholars to write about Revisionist ideology as though it constituted a coherent worldview from its very beginning.12 By situating both Jabotinsky and his political writings within historical time, a far less swift and ideologically coherent political narrative emerges. Describing

12 See, for example, Eran Kaplan, The Revisionist Right and its Ideological Legacy (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), Bilski Ben-Hur, Raphaella, Kol yahid hu melekh: ha-mahashava ha- hevratit veha-medinit shel Ze’ev Jabotinsky (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1988).

41 the impact of Polish Jewish youth movements on the development of Revisionist politics, the following pages also call into question the tendency of scholars to accept offhand that Jabotinsky imposed his fully formed vision for nationalist politics upon his followers.13 Instead, the chapter suggests that the adherents of Revisionism were not simply accepting a political vision imposed from above, but played an active role in shaping it as well.

The Swamp: Jabotinsky, Jewish youth and Polish Jews Although Jabotinsky’s turn to Jewish youth and Polish Jews in 1927 signaled a dramatic shift in his political tactics, it was not the first time that he had thought of these groups in political terms. His ambivalence towards mobilizing political support among young Jews in the mid-1920s can only be understood when set against the backdrop of his experiences as a Zionist activist in the preceding decade. During this earlier period, young Jews had been at the center of Jabotinsky’s political activity. Several months following the outbreak of the First World War, Jabotinsky began a campaign to urge the British government to form Jewish military units. In letter after letter to fellow Zionist activists and representatives of the British government between 1915 and 1917, he estimated that as many as fifty thousand Russian Jewish youth would eagerly join Jewish battalions, under British command, in order to help liberate Palestine from Ottoman rule.14 Inundated for months with Jabotinsky’s letters, the British War Office finally allowed him to recruit Russian Jewish youth living in Britain. Jabotinsky began a recruitment campaign in London, Leeds and Manchester. The majority of Russian Jewish youth, however, were hostile to his project. At public meetings to promote the Legion, he was met with jeers from the audience, and at one point, pelted with potatoes.15 His public castigation of Russian Jewish youth in London’s East End for “relax[ing] in tea-rooms

13 See Kaplan, as well as Schechtman and Benari, History of the Revisionist Movement (Tel Aviv: Hadar, 1970), Ya’akov Shavit, Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement, 1925-1948 (London: F. Cass, 1988) 14 Vladimir Jabotinsky to Charles Fescott, 7 December 1915, in Daniel Carpi, ed., Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Igrot (Jerusalem: Ha-sifriyah ha-tsiyonit, 1995), p.53. The more frequent number of young Russian Jewish recruits Jabotinsky estimated could join was 20 000. See, for example, Jabotinsky to Kenneth Lyon, 6 May 1915, Ibid., p. 29, Jabotinsky to Philippe Henri Casgrain, 31 October 1915, p. 50. 15 Yigal Elam, ha-Gedudim ha-‘ivriyim be-milhemet ha-‘olam ha-rishonah (Tel Aviv: Ma’arakhot, 1973), p. 111.

42 while English youth are dying in the trenches” had fallen on deaf ears for good reason.16 At the same time as his campaign was taking place, the British government was threatening to either force Russian Jewish immigrants to join the or send them en masse back to Russia. The British government’s alliance with autocratic Russia also provoked protest among young Russian Jewish émigrés, many of whom were sympathetic to socialist movements. The infamous legacy of the Russian government’s forced conscription of Jews made Jabotinsky’s appeal to join the army all the more repugnant to them.17 Then came the winter of 1917. Jabotinsky initially saw the February Revolution as the saving grace for his vision of Russian Jewish youth joining a Jewish battalion. Writing to British military personnel, he reasoned that young Jews in Russia would surely join in the effort to liberate Palestine now that the Entente resembled “a coalition of all democracies in the world.”18 This project, too, was met with indifference by Russian Zionist organizations, including youth groups. Jabotinsky blamed their reaction on the “pacifist demagogy”19 spreading among the Russian Jewish masses. The few Russian Jewish soldiers who were already training in a Jewish battalion in London had sent a letter to the city’s Russian embassy, insisting that they were not Zionists, and threatening to cause a ruckus if they were not immediately repatriated to Russia.20 The only tales of battle Jabotinsky could offer in letters to his co-conspirator, the former Russian war hero Joseph Trumpeldor, were of drunken brawls erupting within the battalion itself.21 “By the way,” he added in one such letter, “they hate me so much that there are mutterings about the desire to beat me up at the first opportunity.”22

16 Quoted in Shmuel Katz, Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, vol.1 (new York: Barricade Books, 1996), p. 194. 17 Harold Shukman, War or Revolution: Russian Jews and Conscription in Britain, 1917 (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2006), pp.62-63. Several scholars have recently argued that much of this legacy was crafted by the late nineteenth century Russian Jewish intelligentsia, and that the actual experience of conscription was far less extreme. See, for example, Olga Litvak, Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). 18 Jabotinsky to David Lloyd George, 29 April 1917, Igrot vol. 2, p. 135. See also Jabotinsky to Felix Pinkus, 9 March 1917, p.120 ; Jabotinsky to Joseph Trumpeldor 21 March 1917, p.124; Jabotinsky to Mark Sykes, 25 March 1917, p. 125; Jabotinsky to Arthur James Balfour, 20 April 1917, p. 130. 19 Jabotinsky to Arthur James Balfour, 20 April 1917, Igrot., p. 130. 20 Jabotinsky to Joseph Trumpeldor, 24 April 1917, Igrot, p. 131. 21 Ibid., 25 April 1917, Igrot., p. 133. 22 Ibid., 24 April 1917, Igrot., p. 132.

43

Although the ultimately came into being, with some five thousand volunteers, Jabotinsky described it as a failure in the immediate years following its creation. The British government insisted that the units not indicate in their name that they were a “Jewish” Legion, and refused to allow the battalions to form a distinct unit. Instead, the brigades were transferred from one British military battalion to the next.23 Rather than conquer and occupy or Jerusalem when the Legions finally arrived to Palestine in 1918, they were sent to deserted Arab villages, where they slaved away at spadework for upcoming offensives, and attempted—unsuccessfully— to ward off malaria. Worse still for Jabotinsky was the fate of the legions after the war drew to a close. Despite his fervent efforts through 1919, he was unable to convince the Jewish soldiers with whom he had served that their longing for demobilization was tantamount to national betrayal. Some optimism about mobilizing support for his military proposals returned to Jabotinsky in 1920, when he helped organize a small group of Jerusalem youngsters into a self-defense unit. When attacks on Jews in the city broke out during the Muslim festival of Nebi Musa in April 1920, Jabotinsky, along with the young men under his leadership, was arrested and sentenced to several years’ hard labor. His internment quickly became the cause célèbre for Jews in Palestine: visitors flocked to his prison cell in Akko, to meet the leader of the self-defense unit who, without firing a single shot, had received the same sentence as two Arab men who had raped Jewish women during the riots. Within one month, however, Jabotinsky was complaining that the Yishuv’s Zionist leaders and the Jewish public at large had abandoned him and his fellow prisoners.24 By the time Jabotinsky was granted amnesty several months later, the public enthusiasm for renewing the Jewish Legions had petered out. His sense of political powerlessness became even more acute upon his return to Europe in September 1921, when he joined the Zionist Organization’s executive. The Zionist Organization’s leadership controlled the principal

23 For overviews of the Jewish Legion’s activity during the First World War, see Yigal Elam, ha-Gedudim ha-‘ivriyim be-milhemet ha-‘olam ha-rishonah (Tel Aviv: Ma’arakhot, 1973), and more recently, Michael Keren, We are Coming, Unafraid: the Jewish Legions and the in the First World War (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2010). 24 Jabotinsky to various institutions of the Yishuv in Eretz Yisrael, 5 May 1920, Igrot., vol.3, p.130.

44 charities of the Zionist movement, oversaw much of the administrative affairs of Jews in Mandate Palestine, and were seen by the British Mandate as the official representatives of the Zionist movement. While the executive was eager to have Jabotinsky help direct the organization’s publicity campaigns, they ignored his calls for them to demand from the British government to establish a Jewish defense force and dismiss any officials who were unsympathetic to the Zionist project. Tensions between Jabotinsky and the Zionist Organization’s leaders reached their zenith several months later, when news began to surface that Jabotinsky had secretly negotiated with members of the Ukrainian Democratic Republic’s government-in-exile that very summer to form a Jewish military unit. The sole purpose of the unit, Jabotinsky would later explain, was to provide protection to Jewish inhabitants of villages, towns and cities that the Ukrainian Democratic Republic’s army hoped to reclaim from Soviet rule. Jabotinsky’s actions were widely condemned by most Zionist leaders. They feared that Soviet officials would use the agreement between Zionists and anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian forces as an excuse to further persecute Russian Zionist activists within the . They also saw Jabotinsky’s decision to enter into the agreement without their approval as a blatant challenge to their own authority. They quickly seized upon the event as a chance to brand him as a reckless dreamer, willing to endanger and betray his own people in the name of his political ambitions. The Jewish press similarly branded him as a traitor. Jabotinsky’s immediate response in December 1921 contained the seeds of how he would think about politics, Poland and the “masses” for several years to come. To his friend Jonah Machower, he wrote defiantly, “This raucousness doesn’t interest me…and I’m sure that even if I was in Warsaw itself I also wouldn’t pay attention.”25 In one of his rare direct references to Poland before his visit in 1927, Warsaw symbolized the impulsive—and, to Jabotinsky, repulsive—“raucousness” exhibited by the Jewish public. In January 1923, the day after leaders from the Zionist Organization voted to open an official investigation into his pact with the Ukrainian political leaders, Jabotinsky resigned from the Zionist Executive. Indignant and unrepentant, he accepted an offer to serve as editor of Rassvyet, a Russian-language Jewish newspaper published in Berlin.

25 Jabotinsky to Jonah Machower, Igrot vol.3, 18 December 1921, p.270.

45 The man who had once claimed to British officials that he represented the hopes and dreams of the Russian Jewish masses now found himself at the helm of a fledgling newspaper, manned by a handful of impoverished émigrés. In June, with wife and son in tow, Jabotinsky joined these writers in Berlin, where as many as 360,000 émigrés from Russia had fled.26 Bearing the name of the Zionist Organization’s flagship newspaper in Russia prior to the First World War, Rassvyet was able to gain a following among Russian Jewish émigrés in Paris and Berlin. The newspaper was, however, merely a shadow of its former self. It never achieved the status, circulation or financial success that Jabotinsky had envisioned for it. Ultimately, he was forced to earn his living by writing articles in Yiddish for newspapers elsewhere. Jabotinsky’s early articles in Rassvyet provided him with an opportunity to vent his deep-seated frustration and sense of betrayal. In a short column published on October 28, 1923, Jabotinsky lashed out at the Jewish public. Entitled “Hefker,” a Talmudic term denoting the renunciation of ownership, the article not only alluded to Jabotinsky’s public spurning of the Zionist Organization earlier that year, but also underscored his own sense of abandonment by the Jewish public. He began by claiming that the paralyzing passivity of the Jewish “masses” was destroying any opportunity for Zionist national ideals to be carried out. Equally culpable were Zionist leaders. Instead of determining the correct path for the “masses…standing with one foot in the ghetto, ”27 they had adopted and succumbed to the public’s mentality and demands. The task of a Jewish politician, Jabotinsky continued, was to relentlessly criticize the public, not to coddle or concede to it. Should their leaders fail to live up to this task, the Jewish masses would remain trapped in their world of thinking and behaving, which Jabotinsky dubbed “the swamp.”28 If describing the Jewish masses in this fashion was not provocative enough, the final lines of Jabotinsky’s essay were even more sweeping, dramatic and biting. Summing up the sorry state of affairs in Jewish political culture, he castigated young

26 The total number of Russian refugees in Germany may have been as many as 560,000 in the autumn of 1920. By 1922, about 250,000 remained. In 1923 the number rose to one half a million, but the numbers significantly dropped in the coming years. Robert Chadwell Williams, Culture in Exile: Russian Emigres in Germany, 1881-1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), p.111. 27 Jabotinsky, “Hefker” in Joseph Nedava, trans and ed., Ha-derekh el ha-revizyonizm ha-tsiyoni: kovets ma’amarim be-“Rassvyet” le-shanim 1923-1924 (Tel-Aviv: Mekhon Jabotinsky be-Yisra’el, 1984) p.103. Originally in Rassvyet vol. 19, no. 40-41, 28 October 1923, pp. 5-6. 28 Ibid., pp. 102, 105.

46 Jewish men and women for their national indifference, embodied in their neglect of self- defense training. Their failure, he declared, meant only one thing: “the Jewish nation has no youth.”29 While there is no doubt that Jabotinsky was aiming here for dramatic effect—he had, after all, spent most of the war trying to mobilize young Jewish men—his subsequent writings on politics suggest that he saw some truth in his declaration. Among the hundreds of articles that Jabotinsky produced following his resignation from the Zionist Executive, this column was one of the few to devote more than a passing reference to young Jews. His previous preoccupation with the political mobilization of youth was replaced by an effort to mobilize support for his political ideas first and foremost among urbanized, acculturated middle-class Jews who had fled Russia. The only young Jews who fit this profile were Russian-speaking high school and university students in fraternities, whether in former cities of the Russian Empire, like Riga, or in Western European cities with newly arrived émigrés, like Berlin and Vienna. In the rare moments that Jabotinsky appealed to “youth,” it was to these students that he directed his call.30 Jabotinsky’s encounter with young Jews in Riga at the end of December 1923 illustrates how his interest in youth as political actors during this period was fleeting at best. In a last-ditch effort to keep both Rassvyet and his life in Berlin afloat, Jabotinsky traveled to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia on a lecture tour. Riga’s Jewish community represented Jabotinsky’s ideal audience. While the influx of immigrants into Riga kept its Jewish community diverse in its economic profile, the city boasted a relatively large percentage of upper-middle-class Jews, many of whom spoke German. Upon his return to Western Europe, Jabotinsky reported to admirers in Vienna and Palestine that although the “parents” in Riga were “for the most part…indifferent and hostile,”31 there was “a new youth, who are longing for discipline and strong leadership…This impression has sealed my fate. I have decided to turn from mere writing to deeds…to establish a

29 Ibid., p. 105. 30 During this period, Jabotinsky attempted to run a Hebrew press. One of its projects was to produce a Hebrew atlas for Jewish high school students. It was published in 1926 as Kol bo la-talmid: sefer shel kis le-shnat 5687 (Paris: Voltaire, 1927). Following a visit to Riga, Jabotinsky wrote fondly of fraternity culture in “Farbenlied” Rassvyet vol. 23, no.15-16, 17 April 1927. 31 Jabotinsky to Frederick Kish 9 December 1923, Igrot vol 4., p.102.

47 movement that will include all the activists scattered worldwide.”32 Indeed, in the spring of 1924, Jabotinsky gave several young Russian Jewish émigrés in Berlin the task of forming a “Provisional Organization Bureau” for the “League for the Revision of Zionist Policies.” Three years later, Jabotinsky published an account of his trip to Riga that later became the basis of the founding myth of the Betar youth movement. According to Jabotinsky, a group of young men approached him and said, “You have no right to preach such views and to stir up young people if you don’t intend to call them to action. You either keep quiet, or organize a party.”33 These young men, already members of a Zionist student corporation called Hashmona’i, pledged to form a youth movement to support Jabotinsky’s political work. Indeed, on the 27th of December, 1923, thirteen members of Hashmona’i, joined by several representatives of local Jewish school clubs and scout movements, founded Histadrut Ha-Noar ha-Tsioni Ha-Aktivisti al shem Josef Trumpeldor—the Joseph Trumpeldor Zionist Activist Youth Organization.34 Jabotinsky’s account, however, is complicated by what preceded and followed his encounter with Riga’s Jewish students. In the same letter in which he praised the youth of Latvia, Jabotinsky added that he, along with the Rassvyet editorial board, had drawn up a plan for political mobilization before his trip. While several young Jews in Riga may have demanded the formation of a party, they were not the impetus for Jabotinsky and his Rassvyet colleagues to form a program for political mobilization. More significant was the fact that Jabotinsky’s contact with the Riga youth organization withered in the months that followed. The only mention of Riga’s youth in his later correspondence came in September 1924, when he wrote to a Zionist activist from the city that “everything we’ll build will likely crumble” and that “only extraordinary circumstances will force me to fulfill my promises to them [Riga’s Jewish youth].”35 By that point, Rassvyet had folded, and Jabotinsky’s Berlin volunteers had disbanded. When Leon Recanati, a leader of Salonican Jewry, wrote, “Is it your genuine intention to do something, or is this all nothing but fine words?” Jabotinsky replied that he was exhausted, and that he was “after

32 Jabotinsky to Paul Diament, 8 December 1923, Igrot vol.4., p. 98. 33 Jabotinsky, “Ha-Hashmonai ha-rigai,” p.191. 34 A. Disentchik, “Di fareynikte yugnt, antviklung un mehus fun Brit Trumpeldor” Massuot 4 (10 January 1928), pp. 5-6; H. Ben Yerocham, Sefer Betar: korot u-mekorot, vol. 1, (Jerusalem: Ha-va’ad le-hotsa’at sefer betar, 1968), pp. 30-34. 35 Jabotinsky to Ya’akov Hoffman, 14 September, 1924, Igrot vol. 4, p. 162.

48 all, nothing but a refugee.” He would continue to try to revive Rassvyet and organize a movement. He added, however, that if a year passed with no political success, he would send a circular “stating plainly and bluntly that life has beaten me, that I am renouncing all Jewish political activity.”36 The youth organization in Latvia was faring no better. The weekly meeting minutes of the organization for the years 1926 to 1927 provide a rather bleak portrait of the movement’s members and leadership. Meetings were largely spent determining how to cope with the failure of the youth movement’s members to fulfill their duties—whether it was learning Hebrew, attending assemblies or performing agricultural training. The movement’s leaders lamented that every time they tried to impose discipline, their group’s members threatened to leave the organization. Leaders, too, continually threatened to abandon ship. With roughly fifty members, the group was far from the political powerhouse promised to Jabotinsky during his visit.37 Not that he, or any members of the Revisionist leadership were taking notice. When leaders of the fledgling Revisionist movement contacted the Riga youth movement, it was to insist that they peddle Rassvyet editions and send the money back to Paris, where a second attempt to form a political bureau and newspaper was underway, this time in Jabotinsky’s attic. Far from an avant-garde of the Zionist movement, they were, at best, seen as a last resort for gathering money to sustain Rassvyet, whose adult readership Jabotinsky considered to be his most important political constituency. Jabotinsky’s marginal interest in mobilizing youth as a political force continued with the formal establishment of the Revisionist movement. When he cobbled together a group of sympathizers at the Taverne du Panthéon on Paris’ Left Bank in April 1925 for the movement’s inaugural conference, not one session was devoted to Jewish youth.38 While the movement’s first publication did include a resolution to build a youth movement, it was buried towards the end of the document. In comparison with the multiple pages allotted to other resolutions, the two sentences devoted to the topic of

36 Jabotinsky to Abraham Recanati, 15 September 1924, Igrot vol. 4, p. 164. 37 “Sefer ha-protokolim shel yeshivot va’ad ha-rashim be-histadrut al shem yosef trumpeldor” 20 April 1926-7 December 1926, JI/B29/2/2. 38 Conference des Sionistes Revisionists Tenue a Paris du 26 au 30 Avril 1925 (Thessaloniki: 1925) in JI, G1/18. French errors in the original title of the handbook are reproduced here.

49 youth seemed of little importance. Following the conference, no concrete plans were generated to create a youth movement. In the wake of the conference, both supporters and opponents of the movement observed that the Revisionist movement’s resolutions were, above all, uneven. On the one hand, they offered a clear, decisive departure from the policies of the Zionist Organization, and echoed Jabotinsky’s calls in Rassvyet for a more aggressive Zionism. Claiming that the Zionist Organization’s leaders were passive and subservient to the British government, the Revisionist movement urged Zionist leaders and supporters worldwide to reject British immigration restrictions and campaign instead for the British government to fully endorse the creation of a Jewish majority in Mandate Palestine. In further contrast to the Zionist Organization’s demands, the Revisionists insisted that the future Jewish homeland include Transjordan, which had been allotted to Britain in a secret agreement struck between France, Russia and Britain in 1916. Despite these firm and bold claims, the resolutions offered no clear social or economic programs for the development of Palestine.39 Revisionists justified this absence by insisting the party did not need to be moored to one ideology, and that they would freely employ and dispose of ideologies based on the ‘needs of hour’ for creating a Jewish majority in Palestine. In private, Jabotinsky and others feared that making concrete ideological choices about the socio-economic composition of Palestine would limit their opportunities to forge alliances with other Zionist political parties. The Revisionist movement’s early positions on socialism make for a particularly revealing case study of these tendencies, and provide an important contrast to developments within the party following Jabotinsky’s trip to Poland in 1927. Although Jabotinsky’s admirers would later claim that their leader was hostile to socialism from the beginning of his political career in 1904, neither Jabotinsky’s work as a journalist nor his personal correspondence prior to 1927 indicate that he possessed a fully formed view on the topic. In the few articles written by Jabotinsky that mentioned left-wing movements, he aimed to prove that socialism, like democracy or any other political alternative to autocratic Russian rule would prove equally unable to eradicate antisemitism or conflicts

39 See collection of protocols and decisions from the First World Conference of the Revisionist Movement, JI/G1/18.

50 between nations. Although Jabotinsky made clear his opposition to the Bolshevik rise to power in his personal correspondence following the October Revolution, he presented no critique of communist ideology in these letters.40 Jabotinsky’s first articles on left-wing Zionism, written over the course of eight months in 1925, not only contain a series of contradictory positions, but also clearly capture his struggle to write fierce, brash prose without burning any bridges for potential support. As Jabotinsky concluded a Rassvyet article in which he proposed that the Zionist Organization distribute funds equally between Labor Zionist groups and organizations representing middle class artisans and private enterprises, he warned, provocatively, that Jewish fascist movements would arise in Palestine to fight against Labor Zionists, should their monopoly on finances go unchecked.41 Soon after, he published a lengthy article in which he tried to untangle himself from any definitive class-identity. He insisted that his calls to promote private enterprise in Palestine did not constitute an attack upon the agricultural work of Labor Zionists or upon socialism. He praised socialist workers for being fervent supporters of the Jewish Legion. As if to prove his openness to socialism, he then castigated Labor Zionists for abandoning “true” socialist ideals, accusing them of forfeiting the struggle for justice and equality in favor of receiving funds from the Zionist Organization.42 Writing in the same vein to a political ally, he added that he “would be prepared to swallow” socialism “like any other faith,” so long as socialists abandoned their support of the Zionist Organization.43 The Revisionist movement’s first pamphlet—What do the Revisionists Want?—presented the party as a non-partisan group united in its opposition to the Zionist Organization’s leadership. The pamphlet insisted that the party “would neither be moved Right nor Left”44 on the question of class conflict, and welcomed the creation of socialist and middle-class factions within the movement. In a 1926 lecture in

40 See Jabotinsky to Joanna Jabotinsky, 11 June 1919, Igrot vol. 3, p.62; Jabotinsky to Bella Berlin 16 January 1920, Igrot, p.110; Jabotinsky to Jonah Machower 18 December 1921, p.270. 41 Jabotinsky, “Basta!” in Joseph Nedavah, ed., ha-Revizyonizm ha-Tsiyoni be-hitgabshuto: kovets ma’amarim be-“Razsvyet” le-shanim 1925-1929 (Tel Aviv: Makhon Jabotinsky, 1985), p. 98, originally published in Rassvyet Vol. 21, No. 26, 28 June 1925, pp. 3-5. 42 Jabotinsky, “Oyev ha-poalim” in Nedavah, vol. 2, pp. 99-106, originally in Rassvyet Vol. 21, No. 31, 2 August 1925, pp. 2-4. 43 Jabotinsky to Oscar Grozenberg, 12 November 1925 in Igrot, vol. 4, p. 284 44 Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Ma rotsim tsionim revizyonistim? (Jerusalem: Hotsa’at Ha-va’ad ha-merkazi shel histadrut ha-tsiyonim ha-revizionistim be-erets yisra’el, 1925), p. 20.

51 Tel Aviv devoted to Revisionism’s political and economic vision, Jabotinsky similarly declared that the movement had an “aristocratic indifference”45 to class conflict. He was far more concerned with ensuring that Jewish businessmen and factory owners hired Jewish workers, rather than Arab ones. The movement’s position on recreating the Jewish Legion in Palestine was also conditioned by efforts to appeal to a broad spectrum of potential supporters. At the founding conference of the Revisionist party, several delegates opposed the inclusion of a resolution in the party platform that would urge Jews to demand from the British government to reestablish the Jewish Legion. One delegate reportedly quipped that such the call would amount to no more than “playing with tin soldiers.”46 Like the movement’s resolution to create a youth movement, the Revisionist call for Jewish self-defense units to be established in Mandate Palestine was buried towards the end of the party platform, amidst dozens of other policy points.47 Much to the chagrin of several Revisionist activists, Jabotinsky refused to give up his belief that the military training of Jews in Palestine was a vital feature of the party’s program. In 1926, he felt compelled to remind his longtime collaborator Meir Grossman that he would refuse any political alliances with fellow Zionists if they rejected the importance of the Legion.48 Attempts by Revisionist activists to create alliances and swiftly rise to power were, by and large, a failure. Much of the Jewish press had dismissed Revisionism; Polish Jewish newspapers, for example, neither offered coverage of the conference nor commentary in its aftermath.49 When the movement had to cobble together quotes regarding the reception of their movement by the “Zionist world,” the best they could muster was prominent Yishuv leader Moshe Smilansky’s quip that the conference was no more than “mere sabre-rattling.”50 Even during the conference, delegates admitted that their insistence that Zionism was in a state of crisis would be a tough sell. The preceding

45 “Hartsa’ah be-migrash ha-macabi be-tel aviv” Davar 31 October 1926. 46 According to A. Herrenroth, quoted in Joseph Schechtman, Yehuda Benari, History of the Revisionist Movement (Tel Aviv: Hadar, 1970), p. 42. 47 “Resolutions” in Conference des Sionistes Revisionists Tenue a Paris du 26 au 30 Avril 1925, pp. 30-36 48 Jabotinsky to Meir Grossman, 7 July 1926 in Igrot, vol. 5, p. 49. 49 Two weeks after the conference, Haynt published a small article in the back of the paper, sent to them via the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.The article listed the conference’s resolutions, but offered no analysis of the event. 50 Moshe Smilansky, Ha-Olam, quoted in Rassvyet 6 September 1925.

52 year had seen an unprecedented wave of mass emigration of Jews to Palestine. While Jewish-Arab relations remained tense, no major outbreak of violence had taken place for over three years. Jabotinsky’s speeches at the Zionist Congress in 1925 and 1927 were rare moments of publicity for the movement. The remainder of Jabotinsky’s time was devoted to writing articles for Rassvyet and New York’s daily Morgn Zhurnal. A lecture tour of the United States in the fall of 1926 was a financial failure.51 The existence of several dozen Revisionist committees in cities across Europe did little to help give the movement political momentum. Perhaps the greatest disappointment, however, lay in Palestine. Despite large audiences for his lectures there in the fall of 1926, the Yishuv’s Revisionist movement consisted of no more than several dozen activists.52 Towards the end of his trip to Palestine, he wrote to a supporter in Romania that the Revisionist movement would more likely find greater success among German Jews, who would certainly not cause the ruckus [gevald] that the Jewish audiences in Palestine had demonstrated.53 Indeed, much of the Revisionist movement’s political activity in its first two years was guided by Jabotinsky’s discomfort with “raucous” audiences. Equally significant was his conviction that political success rested on courting the support of German Jews, famous among European Jewry for their “Western” attitudes and behaviors. Like German Jewish political leaders, Jabotinsky believed that if Polish Jews in the interwar period were to enter into the political sphere, they would do so primarily as the recipients of charity, rather than as the vanguard of political change.54 When early Revisionist publications made mention of Jews in Poland, it was to showcase their misery and desperation. Although Jabotinsky evoked the impoverishment of Polish Jews when arguing for mass immigration to Palestine, he refrained from directly calling upon them to engage in any political activity. Both Jabotinsky’s correspondence and the meeting minutes of the Revisionist Executive provide further evidence that early Revisionist activists rarely thought of Polish Jews as useful political activists. In the meeting minutes

51 Katz, Lone Wolf, vol. 2, pp. 993-998. 52 Benari and Schechtman, pp.79-118. 53 Jabotinsky to Zvi Bonfeld, 6 December 1926, Igrot vol. 5, p. 111. 54 On German Jewish perceptions of Eastern European Jews, see Steven Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German-Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982).

53 of the Revisionist Executive in Paris between 1925 and 1927, Poland was only mentioned once.55 The Executive decided not to pursue any publicity campaigns there, and chose instead to concentrate their efforts on Germany, England and the United States. Of the two hundred and sixty-four letters written by Jabotinsky between January 1925 and December 1926, assembled and published by the Jabotinsky Institute, only three discussed the Revisionist movement in Poland. All were addressed to the poet Ya’akov Kahan, who had offered to help organize a Revisionist club in Warsaw. In his remaining correspondence, Jabotinsky expressed no concern to friends or colleagues about creating a political campaign in Poland.56 It was only in the late 1930s, long after Poland had become the most important center for Revisionist activity, that Jabotinsky described how he had been convinced as early as 1905 that Zionist youth in Warsaw were the “pinnacle [golet ha-tiferet] of the new Zionist generation.” But even in this account, he attributed their dedication to Zionism partly to their “proximity to the West,”57 as if their potential political power was in spite of the Eastern European milieux in which they lived. Yet it was precisely in Poland that the movement would not only find its greatest success, but also discover its very ideological foundations. While Jabotinsky grasped for support among small circles of admirers in Tel Aviv, Salonica, Vienna and elsewhere, and as Riga’s Betar group struggled to stay above water, groups of Polish Revisionist youth were developing a political culture that would profoundly influence the course of the Revisionist movement and its ideological development.

55 See “Protocols of the Revisionist Executive, Paris, 1925-1929” MJ/G1/2 56 Jabotinsky had promised Kahan that he would try to visit the country in March 1926; several months later, he even described him as “the moving force in the most important of all European countries.” Significantly, however, he expressed relief rather than disaapointment to his wife when he did not receive a visa to travel to Poland. Jabotinsky had described various locations, from the United States to Bessarabia as the “only hopes” for the Revisionist movement. His description was most likely an attempt to get the poet, who had informed Jabotinsky that he was leaving Warsaw, to remain in the city. See Jabotinsky to Anya Jabotinsky 5 October 1925 in Igrot, vol. 4., p.310; Jabotinsky to Ya’akov Kahan, 22 April 1926 in Igrot., vol. 5, p.32, 11 August 1926, pp.59-60, 9 September 1926, p.69, Jabotinsky to Yitzhak Grinboym, September 24, 1926, p.74, Jabotinsky to Kahan 18 December 1926, p.117. 57 Jabotinsky, “Autobiografia” in Ketavim nivharim, volume 1 (Jerusalem: Amichai, 1947), p. 60. Although fragments of this text were first published in the German Revisionist periodical Medina Iwrit in November 1936 and January 1937, the bulk of the text first appeared in Unzer Velt from 3 March-14 July 1939.

54 Three Cities: The Rise of Pro-Jabotinsky Youth Movements in Poland When Jabotinsky traveled through Poland in the winter of 1927, he met with the leaders of the youth movements Menorah/Żydowski Skaut, Haszomer Hatahor-Ha’Leumi and Haszachar. Claiming to be ardent supporters of the Revisionist cause, these leaders played a key role in the formation of Betar in Poland. Hailing from Warsaw, Kraków and Stanisławów, they had devoted years to developing an ideological framework for their movements. The cities in which they operated could not have been more different. Each one bore the imprint of the unique patchwork of ethnic and religious groups within their midst, and each carried the distinct legacy of their experiences under imperial rule. In late nineteenth-century Stanisławów, a borderland city in southeastern Galicia at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, Jews had enjoyed far greater political freedom under Habsburg rule than Jews living in Warsaw, which was under Russian rule. While interwar Kraków was famous for its Polonized Jewish intelligentsia, many of whom were educated in Habsburg gymnasia, Warsaw was a metropolis with a more traditional Jewish population. Despite these differences, among many others, the three youth movements shared a deep attachment to Polish nationalist youth movement culture, and deliberately drew from its emphasis on militarism, as well as its staunch opposition to socialism. Furthermore, these movements claimed not only to offer a response to political trends on the “Jewish street,” but also addressed broader challenges posed by the Polish political scene. This section explores the development of each group, with particular attention to the ideological trends that would later transform the entire Revisionist movement. It also examines how the distinctive culture of the Polish proto-Revisionist youth movements was shaped by larger trends in Polish society. Lastly, this section investigates why the establishment of an authoritarian government in the country in 1926 provided fertile ground for the Revisionist movement to take action when Jabotinsky finally arrived in the country in February 1927.

Stanisławów: Adalbert Bibring and Menorah/Żydowski Skaut In the summer of 1923, members of a Stanisławów police unit entered the home of Max Auster, a thirteen-year old boy affiliated with Żydowski Skaut, the “Jewish Scout” organization. Their search warrant had been issued in order to investigate whether or not

55 the group was conducting illegal military activity in order to train a Jewish army, as several Polish journalists in Lwów had claimed. According to the police report that followed, Auster’s testimony “proved that ‘Skaut’ is organized in a militaristic fashion, [and] that its activities embrace military drills…”58 The report added that Adalbert Bibring, a young academic, was acting as a military commander, appointing, demoting and punishing the scouting recruits in accordance with military regulations. Based on the report, local authorities banned the movement. In response, Bibring appealed to the Ministry of the Interior [Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych, MSW] in Poland’s capital. In his written appeal, he insisted that the movement was no different than the Polish scouting movements that had originated in the region several years beforehand. Like these movements, Żydowski Skaut used scouting culture to “fortify the souls, willpower and bodies of youth” and to create loyal citizens. 59 Responding to suspicions that the group was socialist in character, he insisted that the movement was determined to protect its young members from political ideologies that would “endanger their national education.”60 Upon receiving this letter, officials at the Ministry of the Interior sided with Bibring. They approved the group, and even gave it the privilege of becoming the first Jewish youth movement to receive official permission to recruit in the city’s Polish gymnasia.61 Government records of this episode, along with the movement’s original request for permission to operate, are among the only extant documents regarding the origins and activities of Adalbert Bibring’s youth movement. The only other source describing Bibring’s work is found in Jabotinsky’s correspondence from March 1927, when he appointed Bibring as the first Head Commander of Poland’s Betar and proclaimed Bibring’s scouts to be Betar’s first recruits.62 Nonetheless, the government documents

58 Wydział Prezydjalny Województwa w Stanisławowie, “Ćwiczenie młodszieży żydowskiej na sposób wojskowy“ 5 December 1923, Urząd Wojewódzki, Wydział Społeczno-Polityczny, Stanisławów, CAHJP/HM2/8665.2, pp. 40, 47. 59 Adalbert Bibring do świetnego Województwa w Stanisławowie, 15 December 1923, CAHJP/HM2/8665.2, pp.53-54. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid, p.59 and Menachem Glerter, “Kehillat Stanislawow bi-shenot 1918-1939” in Rabbi Y.L. Ha-Cohen Maimon, ed., Arim Ve-Imahot Be-Israel: matsevat kodesh le-kehilot yisrael she-nihrevu bi-yede ‘aritsim u- teme’im (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kuk, 1946), p. 291. 62 Jabotinsky to Propes, 25 March 1927, Igrot vol. 5, p. 161.

56 and the incident they describe tell us a great deal about the movement, as well as the social and political context in which it came into being. The complaints of the Lwów press, the reaction of the police and Bibring’s response are best explained by setting them against the backdrop of the development of Polish nationalism in the region. For Poles living in 1920s Lwów, it would have seemed entirely plausible that a scouting movement could serve as the foundation for an army. On the eve of the First World War, the city, then the seat of Polish political leadership in the Habsburg Empire, was also home to the Polish Scouting Movement (Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego). Founded in 1912, the movement’s leaders envisioned scouting games as the basis for military training for Poland’s future liberation struggle. The movement provided a disproportionate amount of recruits for the Polish legionary movements during the First World War.63 Furthermore, Żydowski Skaut was operating in a region that had until recently been battered by military conflicts between the region’s various ethnic groups. Only five years had passed since Ukrainian nationalists fought for an independent Ukraine, and declared Stanisławów—once the German “Stanislaus”, and for a brief time the Ukrainian “Stanislavyv”—to be their capital. Barely two years had gone by since the Polish-Soviet war, and government officials remained deeply concerned that socialists within their midst would attempt to destabilize the region. With the Polish government’s future in the region tenuous at best, government officials saw it as their duty to Polonize the region and quell any stirrings of minority nationalism. Hence the warning from the local police to Warsaw’s Ministry of the Interior that permitting Żydowski Skaut to operate would not only undermine Polish school authorities, but would also promote “Jewish solidarity and separatism.”64 Concerned about the rise of Jewish nationalist youth culture in Polish schools, police officers likely also took into account that the Polish Scouting Movement had originated in the high schools of Lwów and Stanisławów. Indeed, it was within the region’s gymnasia that Jewish students, like their Polish counterparts, first encountered the scouting movement. When Jewish students were excluded from Polish scouting organizations in Lwów on the eve of the First World War, they congregated instead in a

63 Eugeniusz Sikorski, Szkice z dziejów harcerstwa polskiego w latach 1911-1939 (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Interpress, 1989), pp. 7-50. 64 Starostwo w Stanisławowie do MSW, 13 March 1924, CAHJP/HM2/8665.2, p. 58.

57 Jewish scouting branch organized by a local Jewish sports club. Although the movement named itself “Ha-szomer”—paying tribute to a Jewish defense organization in Palestine founded in 1909—its program was only nominally Zionist. During the war years, the movement’s ideology became even more eclectic: many of its members, now refugees in Vienna, drew liberally from the culture of German youth movements like the Wandervogel.65 In 1916, the movement united with an academic Zionist group to form Haszomer Hacair, which became the leading Zionist youth movement in Poland in the early 1920s, attracting several thousand members. Still, the primary frame of reference for the youth movement’s members remained the Polish scouting organizations that had excluded them. In 1918, a report from Haszomer Hacair’s executive council explained that the pre-war Jewish scouting movement was “the Jewish translation of a Polish military organization.”66 Like the pre-war Haszomer, Żydowski Skaut was also perceived as a military organization, and was composed of acculturated middle-class gymnasia students who were deeply familiar with and attached to Polish culture. Indeed, the movement’s founders had come of age in the same milieu as those who founded Haszomer Hacair. The very name of the scouting movement’s founder, along with the names of the other signatories on the movement’s request for legalization, marked them as acculturated Jews.67 Reared in both Polish and German, names like “Ludwik” and “Maks” paid homage to rulers of the Habsburg Empire, while names like “Zygmunt” were Polonized versions of common German names. The name of the group’s leader, “Adalbert,” paid homage to the patron saint of Bohemia, Poland, Hungary and . These young men serve as excellent examples of the fluid nature of national and imperial identities in Habsburg Galicia.68 They likely considered it natural to articulate their Zionism using the

65 David Zait, Ha-utopia ha-shomrit: ha-shomer ha-tsa’ir be-Polin, 1921-1931 (Givat Haviva: Ha-Merkaz le-moreshet Ben Gurion, 2002) pp. 13-18. 66 “Hashanim ha-rishonim be-galitsia” in Yehuda Gothelf, Avraham Kohen, eds., Sefer ha-Shomrim: antologyah la-yovel ha-20 shel ha-shomer ha-tsa’ir, 1913-1933 (Warsaw: ha-Hanhagah ha-‘elyonah le- hist. ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, 1934), p. 6. 67 Założyciele Stowarzyszenie "ŻYDOWSKI SKAUT" 14 July 1923, CAHJP/HM2/8665.2, pp.22-33. 68 On national identities in late-nineteenth and early twentieth century Galicia, see Alison Fleig Frank, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005) and Keely Stauter-Halstead, The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848-1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).

58 language and culture of Polish nationalism, which itself drew liberally from English and German youth movement culture. Although we know that by 1927 Żydowski Skaut had come to affiliate itself with Jabotinsky and the Revisionist movement, the sources provide few clues as to when this took place, let alone why. Somewhere between 1924 and 1925, the movement changed its name to Menorah, paying homage to the insignia used by Jabotinsky’s Jewish Legion. By the end of 1925, the Polish government reported that the group had gained more than one hundred members, and had begun conducting its activities in Hebrew.69 Spanning a mere three paragraphs, the only published Jewish retrospective of the organization explained that the movement’s members saw Jabotinsky as their “spiritual leader,” yet remained “politically agnostic.”70 This recollection is corroborated by the first statute of Betar, drafted by Bibring in the spring of 1927. With the exception of a call to create a Jewish Legion, not one regulation or resolution matched the original political platforms of the Revisionist movement. Rather than instruct the youth movement’s members to read party pamphlets, Betar’s statute recommended that they read Jabotinsky’s memoirs of the Jewish Legion. It was Jabotinsky the mythic military leader, not Jabotinsky the Revisionist, who they revered. The clearest link to a political movement offered by Bibring’s instructions was found in his suggestion that Betar’s members read periodicals from the Polish scouting movement.71

Kraków: Reuwen Feldszu and Haszomer Hatahor/Haleumi Although government reports about Bibring’s group do much to shed light on the social background of its members and its relationship to Polish scouting culture, they only provide a brief glimpse into the group’s ideological foundations. Bibring’s insistence that the movement was hostile to any dangerous ideological influences most likely point to an aversion towards socialism. Still, the fact that Bibring was trying to win the government’s approval calls into question whether or not his ideological

69 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne z ruchu zawodowego i społeczno-politycznego na terenie województwa stanisławowskiego za miesiąc czerwiec, 31 lipca 1925 r”, Komenda Województwa Policji Państwowej w Stanisławowie, AAN/MSW/2019/0/1. 70 Menachem Glerter, p. 291. 71 “Regulamin wewnętrzny na czas przejściowy Związku Zrzeszeń Harcerzy Żydowskich im. Josefa Trumpeldora w Polsce”, 1927, JI/B-33/4/2.

59 proclamations accurately reflected Żydowski Skaut’s program. In contrast, documents preserved in Polish and Israeli archives concerning Kraków’s Haszomer Hatahor/Haleumi—The Pure/National Scout—leave no doubt of the movement’s vehement opposition to socialism. Their leader, Reuwen Feldszu, was one of the first Polish Zionist youth movement leaders to declare, in no uncertain terms, a war against the Jewish Left, and to place this battle at the center of his youth movement’s program.72 The very name of his movement implied that it was pure from the taint of socialism. Like Bibring, biographical information about Feldszu is scant. We know from a handwritten curriculum vitae preserved by his family that he was born in the late 1890s into an acculturated, middle-class family in East Galicia. During the First World War, he had fled to Vienna, along with tens of thousands of Galician Jews. There, as a student in a gymnasium, he joined Haszomer Hacair. Enthralled by the utopian youth communities that the group promised to cultivate, he immigrated to Palestine when he was nineteen, living in the movement’s ascetic commune established on the edge of the Sea of . In 1921, he returned to Vienna to pursue a doctorate in international relations, and also dabbled in rabbinic studies. Returning to Kraków in 1925, he was hired as a literary critic for the Polish language Zionist daily Nowy Dziennik, and became a well-known activist in the local Zionist Organization. Although it is unclear as to whether or not he remained an active member of Haszomer Hacair during these intervening years, he joined the organization’s leadership in 1925. Feldszu, along with other veterans of the movement, was soon outflanked by leaders who adopted a pro-Soviet stance. They called for class war, immediate immigration to communes in Palestine and revolution. As Haszomer Hacair shifted to the radical Left, Feldszu abandoned the movement and established Haszomer Hatahor/Ha-le'umi in 1926.73 By the end of 1927, the group boasted fifty branches, and had spread from Galicia to central Poland, where they merged with a series of groups who called themselves “Ha-Szomer Ha-Leumi” [The National Guard].74

72 See Laurence Weinbaum, “Shaking the Dust off: The Story of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Forgotten Chronicler, Reuben Feldschu (Ben Shem)” Jewish Political Studies Review 22: 3-4 (Fall 2010), pp. 7-44; Eugenia Prokop-Janiec, Polish-Jewish Literature in the Interwar Years Abe Shenitzer, trans. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), pp.16, 209-210. 73 David Zait, Ha-utopia ha-shomrit: ha-shomer ha-tsa’ir be-Polin, 1921-1931 (Givat Haviva: Ha-Merkaz le-moreshet Ben Gurion, 2002) pp.180-196. 74 Haszomer Hatahor/Haleumi, “Biuletin #1”, November 1927, CZA/DD1/4137.

60 When Feldszu left his original youth movement, he rejected the notion that class- war and revolution constituted core features of the Zionist project. At the same time, however, he drew upon the newly militarized rhetoric of Haszomer Hacair to construct his own scouting movement’s worldview. “Zealots,” Feldszu’s programmatic essay in the movement’s first journal, underscores the extent to which he viewed his movement’s task in militaristic terms. Covering hundreds of years in three paragraphs, he proposed that Jewish history had been shaped above all by a long chain of wars. These battles, he continued, were not between Jews and those of “foreign blood,” but were rather conflicts that took place “within , one race.”75 During each period of war, the nation was ultimately saved by Jewish “zealots,” whether Talmudists, Hasidim or Zionists. The new enemy within, Feldszu explained, was the communist Jew, whose “slogans have kidnapped many.”76 Communism was, Feldszu insisted, “the disease poisoning our youth.”77 The task of Haszomer Hatahor/Haleumi, he concluded, was to “lead this war” against the communist infiltration of the Zionist movement by teaching Jewish youth how to be “zealots of the nation.” 78 A fellow editor of the journal insisted that the scouting movement’s leaders did not intend to create a new ideology, but rather sought to return to the original program of Haszomer Hacair. Feldszu’s analysis, however, made clear that the movement radically departed from Haszomer Hacair’s initial tenets.79 While the militarized language that propelled the text certainly set the movement apart from the original program of Haszomer Hacair, its use of racialized language was its most radical departure. Feldszu’s colleague was right in one respect. The ideas articulated by Haszomer Hatahor/Haleumi were not original in any sense. By describing the nation in terms of race and blood, and calling its members to wage a war against socialism, the movement echoed key features of the ideology of European right-wing movements. If Haszomer Hatahor/Haleumi’s racialized and militarized language dramatically differed from the Revisionist movement’s platforms in the early 1920s, their description of the ideal pioneer was a closer match. Unlike Haszomer Hacair, which proclaimed that

75 Reuwen Ben-Szem, “Kana’ut” Derekh Hashomer Ha-Le’umi December 1927, p. 3. 76 Ibid., p. 5. 77 Ibid. 78 p. 6. 79 Ya’akov Rechtman, “Ha-shomer Ha-Tahor/Ha-Leumi, Ma hu?” Derekh Hashomer Ha-Le’umi December 1927 p. 9.

61 pioneering entailed living on a commune in Palestine, Feldszu’s movement insisted that anyone who dedicated their lives to building the country was a pioneer.80 This definition would become a central feature of Betar’s ideology. Still, Haszomer Hatahor/Haleumi’s journal never mentioned the Revisionist movement. Furthermore, while the movement declared its opposition to socialist Zionists, it never once openly opposed the Zionist Organization, of which Feldszu was an active member. Nonetheless, when Feldszu replaced Bibring as head of Betar in early 1928, and began to pen some of the movement’s core ideological texts, he continued to describe the development of Zionism as a battle between left-wing and “pure” nationalist forces, and reproduced the same racialized, militant and anti-socialist language that characterized his earlier columns. Haszomer Hatahor/Haleumi’s calls for a fierce struggle against socialism predated and even anticipated the language that Jabotinsky and the Revisionist movement as a whole would deploy against Jewish socialists and communists.

Warsaw: Jakób Perelman and Haszachar Of the three youth movements that formed Betar in Poland, Haszachar was the largest, numbering some several thousand members by the mid-1920s. Although it shared with the other movements a strong attachment to Polish culture, it distinguished itself in its proximity to the Revisionist party’s emerging political platforms and practices. Founded in Warsaw in 1922 as Żydowski Związek Skautowy im. Włodzimierza Żabotyńskiego [Vladimir Jabotinsky Jewish Scouting Organization], the movement soon after became Haszachar [“Dawn”], a Hebrew homage to the Revisionist periodical of the same name. The only extant copy of the youth movement’s journal—a twenty-two page Polish language publication produced in 1926—was replete with information about emerging Revisionist cells in Romania, and England, and included a biography of Jabotinsky.81 Unlike Haszomer Hatahor/Haleumi’s publications, Haszachar’s journal insisted on the need to form a Jewish Legion.82 The group’s opposition towards socialism was also more tame. Although Jakób Perelman, the movement’s founder, opposed

80 R. Ben Szem, Yugend tsionizm, pp.13-17. 81 Jakób Perelman, ed., Haszachar 26 September 1926, pp. 11-17. 82 Ibid., pp. 2-5.

62 socialism, the journal did not openly call for a war against the Jewish Left, nor did it use the militant, racialized language employed by Feldszu. Instead, it echoed the Revisionist call to remain above class conflict. Despite its declared allegiance to the Revisionist movement, however, Haszachar was the first proto-Revisionist movement to be marginalized and ultimately shunned by the Polish Revisionist leadership when it consolidated its authority between 1925 and 1929. No doubt informed by his experience of being shut out of the Revisionist leadership, Perelman’s 1936 memoirs included vitriolic attacks on Bibring and Feldszu.83 Although his account needs to be read with caution, it nonetheless points to several trends within his youth movement that stayed with Betar throughout the interwar period. Perelman’s first encounters with Polish scouting culture as well as his turn to Zionism echoed the experiences of the Galician Jewish high school students of Haszomer Hacair and Żydowski Skaut. In 1912, he had joined a Jewish scouting group named after Berek Joselewicz, a Jewish colonel in the Polish Army who had fought against the third and final partition of Poland in 1794. Joselewicz’s legacy was often invoked by Polonized Jews as proof that Polish-Jewish brotherhood was possible and that Polish Jews were deeply committed to Poland’s national liberation. This was a notion to which Perelman clearly subscribed. In 1920, in the midst of the Soviet siege of Warsaw, Perelman, along with several other Polish Jewish army veterans, volunteered to fight. Instead, the Polish government interned them in a detention camp north of Łódź, fearing that they were Bolsheviks in disguise. Perelman identified this experience of betrayal as the moment that led to his “conversion” to Zionism and his realization that a Jewish Legion needed to be formed in Palestine. He subsequently went to the Zionist Organization’s headquarters, and gathered a group of teenagers between fifteen and sixteen years old who were interested in scouting. By the end of 1922, Perelman’s group boasted some fifty members.84 In many ways, Haszachar‘s haphazard expansion was typical of youth movements throughout the region. The movement’s committee sent letters to various community leaders in cities, small towns and villages throughout central Poland and the Polish

83 Jakób Perelman, Ruch Rewizjonistyczny w Polsce, 1922-1936 (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Europa, 1937). 84 Ibid., pp. 1-10.

63 borderlands (kresy), announcing the formation of a Jewish scouting group, encouraging them to join, and later asking them to provide financial support to the head office in Warsaw. The movement also dispatched emissaries to various locations with orders to set up local branches. Success, however, was far from guaranteed. Perelman, who fancied himself a dignified, urban intellectual, bemoaned the “caprice of provincial youth” as the movement struggled to branch out.85 He recalled traveling through the night by train to a small shtetl in the kresy, finding no one to greet him at the train station, and receiving faulty directions to a local Haszachar branch that did not exist. In another case, a young married emissary of Haszachar struck up a scandalous affair with a local girl. Needless to say, Perelman reported, it would take years for the town to finally allow a Revisionist organization to be established.86 Once the movement began to create branches across central Poland, it became an even greater challenge for Perelman to impose a vision for the movement’s ideology and practice. The 1926 diaries of Moshe Friedman, a young high-school student living in Grodno who became a local Haszachar leader, underscore how rarely the ideas and behaviors of local youth movement members corresponded to the perceptions and prescriptions of the movement’s headquarters. Friedman had joined not out of ideological fervor, but rather because Haszomer Hacair, his preferred home, was not accepting new members.87 Competition between the two groups was based on cultural achievements, not ideological worldviews.88 Even within Haszachar, Friedman reported, ideology was neither central nor uniform.89 Although Friedman argued for the need to create a Jewish self-defense unit, others in the group proposed that Jews in Palestine had no need whatsoever for the , a Jewish police battalion or a Jewish army.90 Despite these debates, the Haszachar organization in Grodno rarely broached the topic of ideology. When Friedman claimed, quite frequently, that the organization was sinking, it was because of the behavior of its members, not their diverse beliefs. The diary only described Haszachar’s headquarters in Warsaw when Friedman

85 p. 29. 86 p. 30. 87 Moshe Friedman, “Yoman,” vol 1. DRC/P-32, p. 7. 88 Ibid., pp. 19, 27-28. 89 pp.19. 90 p.25.

64 recounted the supposedly wild antics of Warsaw Jewish youth affiliated with the movement.91 On this point, Perelman would have likely agreed. At the heart of the leader’s account of Haszachar’s integration into Betar was an attempt to blame his marginalization from the Revisionist leadership upon the youth movement’s membership, whom he branded as “volatile and disrespectful animals.”92 According to Perelman, groups within the Haszachar organization constantly revolted against either the movement’s ideology or Perelman’s authority. First to leave was a group of students in April 1925. In a letter to Perelman, they voiced their opposition to Jabotinsky’s program, which they noted “elicited no response in Jewish communities, not only in Poland, but throughout Europe.”93 The second group to abandon ship had grown frustrated with Perelman’s leadership style, which he himself had characterized as authoritarian. They sought a new leader in the Hebrew poet Jakób Kahan, who was attempting to cobble together a Revisionist committee in Warsaw in 1925. Perelman begrudgingly struck a deal with Kahan that Haszachar would remain the sole Revisionist youth movement in Poland, so long as it answered to the authority of the Revisionist executive.94 The third faction to emerge, according to Perelman, left for no discernible reason whatsoever, and founded an organization called Brit Hercel. The variety of groups that had emerged nearly toppled Haszachar during its first national conference in September 1926. The conference amounted to no more than attempts to unseat Perelman from his position as head of the organization. The highlight, however, was when members of Brit Hercel attempted to storm the building. Several of the two hundred and seventy delegates, Perelman reported, reached for their pistols; only the presence of Warsaw’s police helped to prevent a violent confrontation.95 There is great reason to doubt Perelman’s portrayal of Haszachar’s members as wild bandits. He was, after all, a man who was deprived of political success and felt deeply wounded by the alleged betrayal of his former followers. Still, his retrospective

91 Ibid., vol 2. DRC/P-32, p. 2. 92 Perelman, Rewizjonizm w Polsce, p. 52. 93 Ibid., p. 32. According to Perelman, the letter was sent April 16, 1925. 94 pp. 34-51. 95 pp. 52-58.

65 portrait of internecine conflict echoed concerns of Betar’s leaders in the 1930s about the reckless, disobedient and violent behavior of Revisionist youth. The notion that there was something wild, even dangerous about the Polish Jewish Revisionist youth, was not simply a claim to emerge from the ranks of the movement’s opponents; it was also shared, to varying degrees, by Betar’s leaders themselves.

Paving the Way for Revisionism: Piłsudski’s Rise to Power Although the three youth movements that gave Betar in Poland its institutional scaffolding differed in significant ways, they shared ideological and cultural practices that drew from trends in Polish nationalist youth movement culture. Ideologically, Haszachar, Haszomer Ha-Tahor/Ha-Le’umi and Żydowski Skaut/Menorah were cool at best and hostile at worst towards socialism. Culturally, they borrowed heavily from the traditions of Polish scouting movements, particularly their military structure and martial ethos. By 1927, these features of Polish youth movement life had become core elements of a mass public culture promoted by the government. At the helm of this new government was Józef Piłsudski, the newly inducted semi-authoritarian ruler of Poland. In the spring of 1926, after the collapse of fifteen governments in Poland, Piłsudski led his army of roughly two thousand supporters towards Warsaw. The three-day civil war that ensued left three hundred people dead, at least one thousand injured, and Piłsudski holding the reins of power. By the end of the year, Poland’s constitution had been re- written, the executive branch of government had been substantially strengthened, and Piłsudski had become the Commander of State. In order to justify the coup, Piłsudski ordered a massive publicity campaign to promote collective over individual interests. The government’s sweeping program of national unity, dubbed the Sanacja or “cleansing” of the Polish body politic, had an enormous impact on the Polish public sphere.96 Underpinning the Sanacja were three claims. The first was that the Polish nation was at war with socialists and ethno-nationalists. Both groups were accused of creating a culture of political corruption and violence that had tarnished the democratic institutions of Poland. The second claim was that the government had suspended democracy in order

96 Ewa Plach, The Clash of Moral Nations: Cultural Politics in Piłsudski’s Poland, 1926-1935 (Athens: Unviersity of Ohio Press, 2006).

66 to ultimately save it. The third and final claim was that authoritarian rule in Poland would allow the citizens of Poland to transcend their differences and work towards the creation of a stable state. Local supporters of Jabotinsky were quick to see the links between this program and the ideas that had been developing in their youth movements as well as among Revisionists in Paris. Some five months after Piłsudski’s coup, a Polish government official attended one of the first meetings of the Zionist Revisionist movement. He reported that the movement’s leaders had declared that “Revisionist Zionists will play the same role in Jewish society that the “Piłsudskiites” will play in Polish society.” Further echoing the language of the Sanacja, the speaker added that “a moral revolution must shake the Jewish community” in order to prevent “the permeation of corruption in the Jewish community [that] is destroying any remaining prestige that Jews enjoy.”97 The appeal of the Sanacja’s program extended far beyond the nascent Revisionist circle. Scholars such as Szymon Rudnicki and Jacek Walicki have documented how the vast majority of Zionist political leaders initially supported Piłsudski’s coup d’état, and endorsed the public Sanacja campaign.98 The Zionist newspaper Nasz Przegląd [Our Review], the most widely-circulated Polish-language daily for Jews, quickly adopted the Sanacja’s slogans, declaring that under Piłsudski, “corruption, instilled and maintained by people imbued with principles of Russian depravity” would no longer plague the “organism” of the Polish Republic.99 Yitzhak Grinboym, the leading Zionist politician in Poland who headed the country’s Jewish delegates club to the Polish parliament (koło), took aim at the ways in which democracy had been enacted in Poland and dismissed the Polish government’s activities prior to the coup as “parliamentary cretinism.”100 Many journalists endorsed the new regime’s paradoxical claim that democracy was being salvaged by suspending most of the country’s democratic practices. A Nasz Przegląd reporter insisted that the suspension of Poland’s parliament “did not mean…that the parliamentary system was useless for Poland.” Dictatorship, the article continued, had in

97 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne za miesiąc wrzesień 1926 r” APW/475/0/10. 98 Jacek Walicki, Ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce w latach 1926-1930 (Łódź: Ibidem, 2005), pp.133-148; Szymon Rudnicki, Żydzi w parlamencie II Rzeczypospolitej (Warszawa: 2004), p. 223-241. 99 “Rachunek strat” Nasz Przegląd nr. 139 21 May 1926. 100 Grinboym, “Un es blaybt an alte kashe…” Haynt 18 May 1926.

67 fact been chosen by the people, and was no more than “an interim effect in the chain of political development in Poland’s political life.”101 These claims would not have been unfamiliar to the newspapers’ readers: they had been used by other semi-authoritarian leaders in the region to justify their rise to power. Like other semi-authoritarian regimes in interwar Europe, the Sanacja government placed tremendous importance on creating a cult of leadership. As part of the regime’s efforts to insist that Piłsudski had not imposed an authoritarian regime, Poland’s citizens were encouraged to avoid terms like “diktator,” and refer to him instead as “dziadek” [grandfather] and as “marszałek” [head commander]. They were assured that just as Piłsudski’s command of the Polish Legions had brought about the independent Polish state, so too would his command of the nation’s citizen-soldiers return the country to its former glory. Piłsudski was lavished with praise by members of the mainstream Polish-Jewish press. In an article entitled “What is the meaning of Piłsudski?”, Yehoshua (Ozjasz) Thon, West Galicia’s renowned Zionist leader and representative to the Polish parliament, also distinguished between developments in Poland and the rise of right-wing governments elsewhere in Europe. Thon assured readers that Piłsudski was a commander who “governs” and “influences” rather a dictator who “rules” and “forces.” The article continued to offer unadulterated praise for Piłsudski: When a man feels national, when he has a deep love for his people that springs from his blood, he cannot bind himself to a specific class, instead he must embrace the entire nation. And he must hate all those who are destructive…and this is especially true in a nation which is still in the process of becoming, of growing, of building.102

Thon’s description was laden with symbols and phrases that had become the mainstay of right-wing nationalist movements throughout Europe. First, he made use of the notion that a deep love for one’s nation could be inscribed in one’s blood. Then, Thon claimed that this intuitive love should lead to national unity, rather than class conflict. Finally, the article argued that hatred was the only appropriate response to “destructive elements”— socialist or otherwise—in a nation that had yet to fully mature.

101 N.S, “Po wyborze Prezydenta” Nasz Przegląd, nr. 151, 2 June 1926. 102 Dr. Jehoszua Thon, “Vos bedaytet Józef Piłsudski?” Haynt 30 May 1926.

68 Jews had good reason to welcome Piłsudski’s regime. The widespread success enjoyed by the virulently antisemitic National Democrats [Endecja] in the parliamentary elections of the early 1920s, along with the violent behavior they provoked when they did not achieve parliamentary power, led many Jews in Poland to believe that the democratic process, with its promise to heed the voices of the ‘masses,’ did not necessarily bode well for Polish Jewry.103 Nor were Polish Jews especially adept practitioners of democratic politics. Polish-Jewish critics of Jewish political activity, whether within the internal governing bodies of Jewish communities throughout the country (kehilot) or in Poland’s legislative house, often spoke of the same clientism, corruption and factionalism that made parliamentary politics in the country so infamous.104 Like other inhabitants of the Second Polish Republic, Polish Jews had grown tired of the political and economic instability that seemed to accompany the country’s parliamentary politics. Many traditional Jews would have likely also been sympathetic to Piłsudski’s promise to prevent socialism from overtaking the country. By the mid-1920s, Jews in Poland were well aware of the Soviet Union’s vigorous and at times violent campaigns to eliminate all non-communist Jewish political parties, suppress traditional Jewish life, and transform its two-and-a-half million Jewish inhabitants into secular communists.105 Leaders of Jewish political parties who aimed to promote and preserve Jewish living bound by ritual observance and religious law were not the only ones to speak of a communist threat. In the latter half of the 1920s, the increasing influence of radical Marxist politics on mainstream Zionist youth movements was the cause for concern among many prominent Zionist leaders in Poland, socialist and otherwise.106

103 Mark Mazower, p.59. 104 See Gershon Bacon, “The Poznanski Affair: Kehillah Politics and the Internal Political Realignment of Polish Jewry” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 4 (1988), pp.135-143; Samuel D. Kassow, “Community and Identity in the Interwar Shtetl” in Yisrael Gutman, Ezra Mendelsohn, Jehuda Reinharz, Chone Shmeruk, eds., The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1989) pp.198-220; Bacon, “Warsaw-Radom-Vilna: Three Disputes over Rabbinical Posts in Interwar Poland and their Implications for the Change in Jewish Public Discourse” Jewish History 13, 1 (1999), pp.103-126. 105 Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (New York: Schocken Books, 1988), pp.70-86. On efforts to create a Sovietized Jewish culture, see Gitelman, pp.88-113; David Shneer, Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, 1918-1930 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). 106 See, for example, “Sprawozdanie Tygodniowe no 19, 6.5.28 do 12.5.28r” Komisariat Rządu m. st. Warszawy, Wydział Bezpieczeństwo Publicznego, AAN/MSW/1402/297/VII-2; R. Ben Szem, Derekh

69 The largely positive reactions of Polish Jews to the rise of the Sanacja help to explain what it was that made Poland particularly fertile ground for the Revisionist movement. Revisionism’s call to place the state above class interests, as well as its description of the Zionist Congress as corrupt and ineffective mirrored the Sanacja regime’s call for unity as well as its criticism of the Polish parliamentary system. Furthermore, the terms used to construct a leadership cult for Piłsudski had already been attributed to Jabotinsky by his adherents. Both men were described as charismatic military leaders, driven by an all-encompassing ambition for statehood and national unity. The fact that these ideas about leadership were both part of the mainstream Polish political discourse and deeply popular among the country’s Jews proved crucial to the Revisionist movement’s success in the country.

Encountering the Masses: Jabotinsky in Poland As Jabotinsky’s journey through Poland progressed in March 1927, his letters expressed a growing sense of ease, confidence and even exhilaration. Once he had left Central Poland, where he confessed the sound of Yiddish had irritated him, he felt more at ease in Kraków, where he was able to lecture in French and German. In Lwów, he wrote to his wife Anya, “My soul is alive here; the atmosphere of Poland is, in spite of itself, cultural.”107 This was a marked improvement from earlier letters, in which he had complained of the pushing and shouting of crowds that welcomed him at train stations. Despite the growing optimism of his letters, the hopes and fears provoked by his encounters with the Polish Jewish public, particularly its youth, still lingered. To his friend and political supporter Shlomo Jacobi, he divulged his sense of surprise, excitement and concern about Polish Jews; “in Poland alone, ” he enthused, “our numbers reach twenty thousand.” Still, he added, “they don’t know a thing about Revisionism, and in general—they know very little.” Unlike the middle-class intellectuals he had imagined to be his chief constituency, Polish Jews only craved “pretty

Ha-Shomer Ha’Leumi (December 1927); David Zait, Ha-utopia ha-shomrit: ha-shomer ha-tsa’ir be-Polin, 1921-1931 (Givat Haviva: Ha-Merkaz le-moreshet Ben Gurion, 2002), pp.180-196. 107 Jabotinsky to Anya Jabotinsky, 10 March 1927, Igrot vol. 5, p.154.

70 expressions,” repeated over and over again. The only way he could reach them, he lamented, was by “chasing after effects, and in a sloppy fashion.” 108 Newspaper accounts and police reports from Jabotinsky’s several weeks’ stay in Poland in the winter of 1927 corroborate his description of the ecstatic reception he received, particularly among young Polish Jews. But they also provide another vantage point from which to understand Jabotinsky’s concerns about the changes he would have to undertake in order to acquire power. While nearly every major Polish Jewish newspaper heaped praise upon Jabotinsky, they stopped short of endorsing his political program. They focused instead on his past exploits as the creator of the Jewish Legion and as a prisoner in Akko. On the eve of his arrival in a city, local newspapers would publish articles recounting his heroic exploits, but devoted little if any space to describing the Revisionist movement itself. Newspaper journalists were obsessed with every minutia of the spectacle that surrounded him, from the sea of people crammed into the auditorium to the colors of the streamers that adorned the stage. They similarly praised Jabotinsky’s performance as an orator: Kraków’s Nowy Dziennik wrote, for example, of his “strong, logical, simply arithmetical” delivery, “speaking quietly, calmly, rarely raising his voice.”109 But these articles did not go so far as to agree with, let alone analyze the content of the speeches themselves. Typical was the reaction of Nowy Dziennik journalist W. Berkelhammer, who wrote that while Jabotinsky was “a wonderful, fascinating speaker, a first-rate publicist, [with] a rousing temperament…we don’t agree with Jabotinsky’s Revisionism, and we take a critical stance against his nationalism.” Nonetheless, he added, “we are for Jabotinsky the Zionist, the inexhaustible servant in the arena of the rebirth of our people, the creator of the Jewish legion and the prisoner of Akko.”110 Other newspapers such as Dziennik Warszawski emphasized how Jabotinsky, the “political chemist and fiery legionist, ” appealed above all to the imagination of the Polish Jewish public, but could not offer the type of practical program that Weizmann, the president of the Zionist Organization, was implementing.111 A police report from

108 Jabotinsky to Shlomo Jacobi, 5 March 1927, Ibid., p. 151. 109 “, Europa a Żydzi, Odczyt Włodzimierza Żabotyńskiego” Nowy Dziennik 6 March 1927 p. 5 110 W. Berkelhammer, “Włodzimierz Zabotyński” Nowy Dziennik 3 March 1927, p.1. 111 “Włodzimierz Żabotyński w Warszawie” Dziennik Warszawski 18 February 1927; “Słowo Wileńskie o przyjeździe Żabotyńskiego” Dziennik Warszawski 21 February 1927.

71 Lwów offered a similar appraisal: the public may have greeted Jabotinsky with “enthusiasm and joy,” and he may have “commanded people’s attention” with his “great energy and oratorical talent,” but Zionist leaders in the city opposed his political orientation.112 The fleeting, mercurial affections of audiences and local Zionist leaders, filing out of auditoriums just as quickly as they entered them, was not new to Jabotinsky. What was new, however, was the cadre of uniformed youth, whether from Haszachar, Menorah or Haszomer Hatahor/Haleumi, that accompanied his every step. Although the myth of Jabotinsky as the leader of the Jewish Legions and the prisoner of Akko only brought fleeting support from adults, it seemed to captivate the steadfast support of youth. Here was a constituency that seemed constant in its support, and also projected a strength and power that Jabotinsky had yet to experience. Jabotinsky’s return to Paris, and the ensuing months he spent holed up in his attic office, served as a stark contrast to the attention that had been lavished upon him in Poland. Donations from Revisionist political committees across Europe were scant; talk began, once again, of shutting down Rassvyet. He complained to several close political supporters that both the newspaper and the party were on the brink of collapse.113 The financial situation of the movement had become so desperate that Jabotinsky was forced to beg for money from Hashmona’i, the student corporation in Riga that had helped to form Brit Trumpeldor, in order to keep the journal afloat.114 The Revisionist adult leadership in Warsaw was of no help; Kahan spent much of this period writing to Jabotinsky about how his literary ventures had left him saddled with debts.115 The second well-worn mode of Zionist political activism—gaining seats in the Zionist Congress— also proved to be a failure for the Revisionist movement. Jabotinsky was bitterly disappointed by the election results of the Fifteenth Zionist Congress in the summer of 1927, when a meager 8,446 votes had been cast worldwide for the Revisionist movement, out of a total of 123,729 votes.116 Just as “mass politics” among youth had demonstrated

112 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne za marzec 1927, Lwów”, AAN/MSW/1185/0/5 p. 74. 113 Jabotinsky to Shlomo Jacobi, 8 May 1927, Igrot vol. 5, pp.175-176; Jabotinsky to Yaakov Hoffman 13 July 1927, Ibid., p. 211. 114 Jabotinsky to The Hashmonai Student Organization, 14 November 1927, p. 274. 115 Ya’akov Kahan to Vladimir Jabotinsky, 22 May 1927, JI/A1-3/15, p. 31, and 16 October 1928, JI/A1- 3/16/2, p. 73. 116 Shavit, p. 37.

72 its potential in Poland, the prospects of the world of journalism and congress elections seemed all the more dismal. Faced with a faltering political program of action, and with the experience of Poland fresh on his mind, Jabotinsky undertook a subtle but significant shift in tactics. This gradual transformation, which began during the spring and fall of 1927, clearly bore the imprint of his experiences in Poland. It was both a shift in geographic orientation and political practice. Refocusing his efforts on Polish Jewry as well as Revisionist youth movements, he began to cast himself as a leader of Polish Jewish youth who embodied the nation’s will. Drawing from political trends in Polish Zionism, and in Poland at large, he redirected the aims and content of the Revisionist program. The first major change in the Revisionist program designed to appeal to Polish Jews was the creation of a broad-sweeping economic program that claimed to represent middle-class interests. With this program, Jabotinsky seized upon the anxieties and feelings of desperation among Polish Zionists which had set in after a boom-and-bust mass immigration to Palestine between 1924 and 1926. In the wake of the Polish government’s decision to substantially increase taxes, some forty thousand middle and lower-middle class Polish Jews, mostly merchants, traders and shopkeepers, had immigrated to Palestine. By 1925, however, the wave of immigration dramatically receded. Then, in the year that followed, nearly twenty-three thousand Jews poured out of Palestine following the collapse of the region’s economy. Assessing the crisis, many prominent Zionist leaders in Poland blamed Polish-Jewish émigrés for their lack of ideological commitment, and well as for their inability and unwillingness to reinvent themselves as farming pioneers, an ideal particularly popular among socialist Zionists. Yitzhak Grinboym had warned that “the world outlook of Nalewki and Kazimierz [two commercial hubs of Warsaw and Kraków, largely populated by Jews], the vulgar spirit of shopkeepers, traders and luftmentshen”117 would destroy the Zionist project. Put differently, according to Grinboym and other proponents of the agrarian vision of Jewish settlement in the Yishuv, the merchant immigrants threatened to reproduce Poland in Palestine. The returnees themselves, joined by several of Grinboym’s political opponents,

117 Grinboym quoted in Mendelsohn, Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915-1926 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), pp.263-264.

73 placed much of the blame upon the Zionist Organization in Palestine for ignoring the needs of middle and lower-middle class immigrants, favoring socialist Zionist organizations instead.118 It was precisely the Jews of Nalewki and Kazimierz—the Polish Jewish “masses” who had rejected the ideological program of Labor Zionist leaders—for whom Jabotinsky now claimed to speak. In an essay entitled “We, the Bourgeoisie,” published in Rassvyet three weeks after his return to Paris, Jabotinsky rejected the notion promoted by Grinboym, among others, that middle-class interests would destroy the Zionist project. Jabotinsky claimed instead that the middle classes were the flag bearers of freedom, enlightenment, and responsible government.119 In Haynt, he published a series of articles that declared that Jews were a nation of merchants, and that merchants were responsible for all major innovations in Jewish culture and religious practice.120 In these articles, his criticism of socialism became far more harsh than before. He argued that socialist and communist ideals, not the interests of merchants and industrialists, perpetuated hunger, poverty, violence and other social ills. Although these articles would later be read as a manifesto of the Revisionist movement’s economic program, at the time of their publication, they raised the eyebrows of some of Jabotinsky’s closest allies. In the week following the appearance of “We, the Bourgeoisie,” fellow Odessan and co-editor of Rassvyet Joseph Schechtman argued that it was not suitable for Jabotinsky to speak in the name of an entire economic class.121 Jabotinsky’s public response to Schechtman’s critique, in which he insisted that members of the Revisionist intelligentsia had the right to claim allegiance to the Polish-Jewish middle classes, underscored the novelty of such an affiliation. Equally intriguing were the values Jabotinsky associated with the bourgeoisie. He linked his de-facto declaration of being a leader of the middle-class “masses” with political values that he described elsewhere as the heritage of nineteenth-century liberalism. By doing so, Jabotinsky tried to mitigate his venture into mass politics with his desire to retain the aura of a veteran

118 Ibid., pp.265-266. 119 Jabotinsky, “Anahnu ha-burganim” in Nedavah, vol. 2, pp. 211-217. Originally published in Rassvyet, Vol. 23, Nr. 15-16 (17 April 1927). 120 Jabotinsky, “Der yuval gedank” Haynt 20 May 1927; “Der Kremer” Haynt 5 June 1927. 121 Jabotinsky, “Tguvot le-inyanei ha-yom” in Nedavah, vol. 2, pp.222-225, originally published in Rassvyet, No. 22, 5, 5 June 1927, pp. 4-5.

74 political leader from a previous era. To aid him in this task, he continued to walk the line between issuing broad sweeping declarations that claimed to represent the masses, and producing writing typical of his journalistic output—brash declarations followed by a slew of caveats. In one such case, Jabotinsky offered the following caveat to Rassvyet readers after calling upon Palestine’s Jewish community to adopt a system of national arbitration modeled on Fascist Italian economic policies: “I’m writing views that I don’t necessarily endorse, but they merit discussion: that is the role of the publicist.”122 Polish- Jewish newspapers were among the first to publish the Revisionist movement‘s new economic proposals, presented in the fall of 1927 at the Third World Revisionist Conference in Vienna.123 Jabotinsky was likely aware that the party’s economic proposals bore a striking resemblance to the Sanacja’s initial economic policies. It is likely that he also knew that Polish Jews and Poles alike saw him as a leader with a distinctly Polish leadership style. Only two days into his trip, he reported to his wife that Gazeta Warszawska Poranna, an ultranationalist paper known among Jews for its antisemetic diatribes, had lavished accolades upon him. Interestingly, Jabotinsky expressed no concern to his wife that the paper had dubbed him a “hardliner integral nationalist” and “Jewish Endek”—a reference the right-wing, antisemitic Polish political party, the National Democrats (Endecja). Nor did he mention that the article lauded him as a hero to Poles because of his alleged promise to liberate the country of Jews, described as “millions of destructive microbes.”124 Instead, he seemed pleasantly surprised, writing to his wife that the Polish journalists had “behaved properly.”125 Jabotinsky seized upon the notion that Revisionists had much in common with Polish nationalists. During a press conference held at Warsaw’s Hotel Rzymski in mid-February, Jabotinsky declared his admiration for Poland and its nationalist leaders: “I don’t like to loudly express my delight,” he began, but “all

122 Jabotinsky, “Le-she’elat tochnitenu ha-kalkalit” in Nedavah vol. 2, p.258, originally published in Rassvyet Vol. 23, No. 50, 18 December 1927. 123 “2-ter tsuzamenfar fun tsionistn-revizyonistn in poyln, di groyse rede fun Vl. Jabotinsky” Haynt 29 December 1927. 124 Adolf Nowaczyński quoted in “Nowaczyński-Żabotyński” Dziennik Warszawski 24 February 1927 and “Nowaczyński o Żabotyńskim” Nowy Dziennik 27 February 1927, p. 10. 125 Jabotinsky to Anya Jabotinsky, 27 February 1927, Igrot vol. 5, p. 143.

75 of you understand what the nationalists of independent Poland mean to me.”126 This was a far cry from his pre-war articles claiming that Polish nationalism had no right to exist because of its promotion of antisemitic and anti-Ukrainian sentiment.127 Gazeta Warszawska Poranna had ignored, if not entirely forgotten these articles when they praised him for being one of the few Jewish journalists who had never made negative remarks about Poles. After describing the reemergence of Poland as a miraculous event, Jabotinsky hinted at the prospects of rapprochement between nationalist Poles and Jews. “I am also very happy,” he added, “that the most patriotic press and journalists [in Poland] become colleagues today with my [Revisionist] journalists.”128 The non-Jewish press was not the only group that Jabotinsky tried to court during his visit; he also made attempts to meet with representatives of the Polish government.129 Far more of Jabotinsky’s attention, however, was directed towards youth movements. His renewed interest in youth as a political force was part and parcel of his attempt to recast himself as a leader who both represented the Polish Jewish everyman and embodied the best of Polish political culture. Immediately upon his departure from Poland, he wrote to Aharon Propes, the leader of Riga’s Brit Yosef Trumpeldor movement. The only time Jabotinsky previously contacted Propes was in a brief note thanking him for escorting him around Riga during a visit in 1925.130 This time, the future of Revisionist youth movements took center stage. He informed Propes that the various Revisionist youth movements in Poland were uniting under the aegis of Betar, with Stanisławów’s Adalbert Bibring serving as head commander. Noting that thousands of Revisionist youth stood behind him, he offered Propes his most enthusiastic forecast yet, writing that Poland would “provide us with tremendous power.” Still, he added that “chaos” reigned among the Revisionist youth. Stressing the importance of harnessing the energy of thousands of young Polish Jews to the same goals of the Revisionist leadership, Jabotinsky insisted that Propes contact Bibring immediately, and provide the Galician

126 “Wł. Żabotyński wśród dziennikarzy warszawskich” Dziennik Warszawski 18 February 1927. 127 “Homo Homini Lupus” Oddeskaya Novostyi 18 July 1910, published in Hebrew in Eri Jabotinsky, ed. Ketavim, vol. 9 (Jerusalem: Hotsa’at Sefarim, 1947), pp. 255-265; “Resistance” Rassvyet Vol 9., No. 11, 15 March 1913, pp. 5-9 ; Vol 9., No.12, 22 March 1913 pp. 8-11; No. 14-15, 4 April 1913, pp. 23-27. 128 “Wł. Żabotyński wśród dziennikarzy warszawskich”Dziennik Warszawski 18 February 1927. 129 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne za marzec 1927, Lwów”, AAN/MSW/1185/0/5 p. 74. 130 Jabotinsky to Aharon Propes, 8 October 1925, Igrot v.4, p. 274.

76 leader with as much information as he could about how to “maintain discipline” among youth.131 It was no coincidence that Jabotinsky’s concerns about the “chaos” of youth echoed his anxieties about the Polish Jewish “masses.” The broader political rituals that Jabotinsky associated with mass politics were most actively cultivated and best embodied by youth movements. Parades, rallies, slogans, myths and leadership cults—mainstays of youth movement culture—put performances of order, beauty, discipline and emotion at the center of the political experience. These performances were not simply a means to achieve power, but were rather the very essence of power itself. In many ways, Jabotinsky’s dilemma of how to obtain political power, or what constituted political power in the first place, reflected the broader challenges faced by Jewish political parties in interwar Poland. It was clear that political redemption—whether in the form of socialist revolution, the creation of a Jewish state, or the acquisition of national autonomy—could not be achieved when parliamentary leaders had been rendered impotent by the Polish political system. Accordingly, leaders had to find other ways to demonstrate political strength. The relative powerlessness of Polish Jewish politicians helps to explain why youth movements became so central to Poland’s Jewish political culture. As patrons of an elaborate network of social institutions affiliated with youth movements—including libraries, youth clubs, sport organizations and summer camps— Jewish political parties could build republics of youth, autonomous Jewish states in miniature, where their visions for Jewish cultural, religious and political life could thrive. The creation of youth movements not only offered a window into the future that political leaders hoped lay ahead, but provided a show of power in Jewish communities across the country. If any Jewish political leader could think of power in theatrical terms, it was Jabotinsky, the man lauded in his time as the most skilled Jewish orator. Indeed, when a Polish Jewish journalist asked him to describe contemporary Palestine, he answered that the country “still lacks a director who could, in this mighty theatrical spectacle, show how to build a country, and to responsibly give out the [performance] roles.”132

131 Jabotinsky to Propes, 25 March 1927, Igrot vol. 5, p.161. 132 “Wł. Żabotyński wśród dziennikarzy warszawskich” Dziennik Warszawski 18 February 1927.

77 Jabotinsky’s new strategy to blur the lines between play, performance and politics emerged once again when a sports journalist ambushed him during a train journey from Warsaw to Łódź. When asked whether young Jews could fulfill the goals of the Revisionist movement by joining sports organizations, Jabotinsky answered, “yes, of course.” Watching ten thousand gymnasts perform the same movements at the same time, he added, “leaves me simply in a state of awe.” While he expanded the realm of what constituted political action, Jabotinsky offered criteria that would make recreational activity an effective political tool. Only “brutal sports” [sport brutalny], he added, could “create the full man, who I imagine the warrior [bojownik] to be.” When asked by the journalist what his favorite game was, he responded, “when one must preserve calm despite the danger of death and amid whizzing bullets, listening to the commands of the captain.”133 This response captures his emerging vision of the role that youth culture would play in bringing about the creation of a Jewish state. Rituals of recreation within Revisionist youth movements deliberately made it difficult for young Jews to distinguish between playing sports and performing military drills, between the fantasy of playing soldiers and the reality of preparing for armed combat. As soon as Jabotinsky had written to Propes about the creation of Betar in Poland, he penned a letter addressed to young Jews in the Polish town of Włocławek, in which he declared that “every young Hebrew, whether boy or girl, is a soldier of the nation.”134 When Jabotinsky returned to Warsaw in December 1927, he placed the cultivation of a militarized Jewish youth culture at the forefront of his publicity campaign. On the eve of his arrival, he chose to publish an article in Haynt on the need for young Jews to learn self-defense.135 The newspaper also published, in full, his speech at the Second Conference of Zionist Revisionists in Poland, held that very month. At the conference, he insisted that military culture was still a central component of the Revisionist program, despite the fact that “people have recently begun to believe that we have given up on the legionary idea.” His comment betrayed what would have been obvious to most of the delegates; until that point, the Revisionist movement had never prioritized military

133 “Wywiad sportowy z Żabotyńskim” Dziennik Warszawski 25 February 1927. 134 Jabotinsky to the Youth of Włocławek, 29 March 1927, Igrot vol 5., p. 164. 135 “A lokh in unzer natsionaler ertsiung” Haynt 25 December 1927.

78 culture or youth. Jabotinsky not only assured the audience that “we hold the [legion] question to be no less important than before,” but that it was “the first article of faith” for the Revisionist movement. Combining this declaration with a sharp critique of Jewish sport organizations in Poland, he urged the delegates to “wage a holy struggle” on any sports organization that did not teach Jewish youth to “make barricades or shoot.” 136 He then ended by alluding to the creation of a Betar’s network of sport organizations. The declarations made by Polish Jewish Revisionists, both during and following Jabotinsky’s visit, reveal the extent to which their leader’s new approach to mass politics and youth culture resonated with them. These were, after all, ideas that had been cultivated in Poland years before Jabotinsky’s arrival in Warsaw in 1927. Each of the youth movements had seen military culture as a central component of their program. Furthermore, Jabotinsky’s first visit to Poland had coincided with the government’s decision to launch a nationwide program that would provide military training to young adults.137 At Betar’s first conference in December 1927, Żydowski Skaut’s Bibring told the audience that Jewish youth were calling out of the depths for adult leaders to change their ways and “prepare every youth to be a fighter for the state,” adding that “we have too many leaders and too few soldiers.”138 Outlining a four-year education plan that began with basic scouting and ended with intensive military training, Haszomer Ha- tahor/Haleumi’s Feldszu assured the audience that they would not merely produce “simple soldiers” but would rather create a “Jewish Legion” whose members possessed a strong sense of morality, industriousness and even a mastery of philosophy and science.139 Feldszu’s vision of the intellectual, noble soldier no doubt appealed to Jabotinsky. Betar’s new leaders also echoed Jabotinsky’s praise of youth as vital political actors. Following the conference, Moshe Lejzerowicz, a Revisionist leader who was one of Poland’s most popular and prolific Yiddish journalists, hailed the delegates as “soldiers of the Revisionist army” who would lead “…arriving in the

136 “2-ter tsuzamenfar fun tsionistn-revizyonistn in poyln, di groyse rede fun Vl. Jabotinsky” Haynt 29 December 1927. 137 “Państwowy Urząd Wychowania Fizycznego“ Dziennik Warszawski 10 February 1927. 138 “Barikht iber di ershte poylishe ve’idah brit trumpeldor” Massuot no. 5, 20 February 1928, p.3 See also “Di konferentz fun brit trumpeldor (haszahar)” Haynt 27 December, 1927 as well as well as “Din ve- heshbon fun der 1-ter konferentz fun “brit trumpeldor” (“haszahar”) in poyln” Cyjon 3, 20 January 1928, pp. 10-12. 139 Ibid., p. 4.

79 psychology of the Zionist masses and first and foremost the youth, who are always the barrier breakers [ban-brekherin]”140 The influence that Jewish youth could have upon the Jewish masses, he continued, would ultimately lead “for the first time in the history of Jewish parties [for] the call for a dictatorship of one person, to whom one can give limitless power in its entirety. Only a conference of Revisionists could oppose the banal form of organizational power [known as] an “Executive”… [and favor] subordinating the will of the individual, to sacrifice personal ambition on the altar of the nation…”141 To what extent did Jabotinsky adopt this mode of leadership during and after this visit? There is no doubt that he was still uneasy about dictatorial governments. The concerns he expressed in several letters and one article following the conference, however, rested primarily on his presumption that political parties could never survive the longue durée if their fates were bound up with aging political leaders.142 Jabotinsky’s very performance of leadership in December 1927 at the Betar conference in Warsaw’s Zionist Organization headquarters certainly lent itself to Lejzerowicz’s interpretation of his political style. Entering the hall once the conference had already begun, Jabotinsky took to the podium, and informed the audience that he had arrived in order to examine them, to see if they were indeed the youth that the Revisionists in Paris and Berlin had been waiting for. The entire conference proceedings were to be a test, with Jabotinsky’s vision of youth serving as the criteria of excellence.143 Following the presentations by Feldszu, Bibring and others, Jabotinsky closed the conference with a speech. This was to be the first time that Jabotinsky publicly spoke of Betar, and it was his first attempt to offer a political vision for the movement. The speech, published in Revisionist journals, was intended to serve as the foundational text for the movement. It also sought to make clear that it was Jabotinsky’s vision of youth, and his alone, that would determine the course of the movement’s development. At the heart of the speech was a vision of youth that emphasized subordinating the needs of the individual to the demands of the nation. The ideal young Zionist, he explained, “does not

140 M. Lejzerowicz, “Nokh der konferentz” Cyjon no. 3, 20 January 1928, p.2. Emphasis mine. 141 Ibid. 142 Jabotinsky, “Ha-bkhirot be-polin” in Nedavah, vol 2., pp. 273-275. Originally published in Rassvyet Vol. 24, No. 12, 18 March 1928, pp.2-3. 143 “Barikht iber di ershte poylishe ve’idah brit trumpeldor,” p. 3.

80 have any face and has no will, he is the expression of a sacrifice which one brings to the nation.”144 This was, in essence, an image of the man of the masses, stripped of any unique qualities, whose life—and death—was to be dedicated fully to the collective. The speech continued by describing how the mass culture that Betar promoted would not encourage the creation of a rabble beyond Jabotinsky’s control. Drawing on the culture of student corporations, the only youth he had ventured to court in the preceding years, he explained that Betar must create soldiers who were “aristocratic, knightly and spiritually rich.”145 This behavior was to be matched by tremendous restraint. Once they were trained as soldiers, their mission was “not to fight, to instead be prepared, to sit and wait.”146 They were nonetheless serving the Zionist cause as soldiers, he added, because “the impression of…power will ensure calm.”147 Although he was referring here to relations with the local Arab inhabitants of Palestine, the notion that Betar’s chief function was to create an impression, that is, to perform power, underscores the extent to which mass political practice had influenced Jabotinsky’s perception of what constituted political power and force, and how to attain it. Yet it was precisely at this moment, as he committed to mass politics as well as to his performance as an authoritarian leader whose political prescriptions alone would solve the nation’s ills, that he was rehashing ideas that had already been developed and promoted by proto-Revisionist youth movements in Poland. Haszomer Hatahor/Ha-leumi and Haszachar had long beforehand called upon youth to prevent class conflict from destroying Jewish communities in Poland and Palestine. When Jabotinsky demanded that Jewish youth subordinate their needs for those of the nation, conference delegates may well have recalled both Feldszu’s writings and the Sanacja slogans that had been such a fundamental feature of Polish public discourse. The vision being proposed to the delegates was not only deeply familiar to them—it was one that they had played no small role in creating.

144 Ibid., p. 4. 145 p.5. 146 Ibid. 147 Ibid.

81 Poland’s nascent Revisionist leadership was willing to indulge Jabotinsky in his insistence that these ideas were his own. They were far more outspoken, however, when it came to determining where the Betar youth movement would strike its roots. In their efforts to convince Jabotinsky that the movement should establish its headquarters in Poland, Polish Revisionist leaders emphasized how the ideological orientation of Jews in Poland offered far better prospects for the movement’s success than elsewhere. Requesting more funds to be allotted to Revisionist activity in Poland, Lejzerowicz ended a letter to the Revisionist Executive in London with a bold and frank declaration: “let’s not kid ourselves. The future [of Revisionism] does not lie in America or even in the Baltic countries…because they lack the constructive-romantic element. Thus Poland, with its streams of masses, remains.”148 In the meantime, Latvian Betar leaders were sending distressed letters to Jabotinsky about rumors of growing “right-wing” tendencies within Betar groups beyond their country.149 In letter after letter from the fall of 1928 through 1929, Latvian Betar leaders pleaded to the Revisionist Executive’s leadership for financial support and complained about the Executive’s failure to keep in contact with them.150 By the end of 1928, Latvia’s Betar leadership was willing to admit that Riga could not serve as the center of the world movement, because, as one leader put it, they did not “have the Jewish masses.” 151 Soon after, Betar’s “Temporary Headquarters” in Riga put its activities on hold. Aharon Propes, now twenty-five years old, was instructed by Jabotinsky to move to Warsaw, where he would lead the effort to transform the thousands of Polish Jewish youth who claimed to be admirers of Jabotinsky into a coherent movement. In the winter of 1929, he boarded a train to Warsaw, where he was joined by Jabotinsky and various Betar leaders from Europe and Palestine for the First World Conference of Betar. Propes’ move to Poland and the staging of the movement’s World Conference in the country’s capital served as a fitting coda to the Revisionist movement’s “discovery” of Polish Jewish youth as their core constituency. From the winter of 1927, Jabotinsky’s

148 M. Lejzerowicz to the Revisionist Executive in Paris, 7 April 1929, JI/G1/9-9. 149 Moshe Yoelson to Vladimir Jabotinsky, 4 December 1928, JI/A1/3/16/3, p.208. 150 See correspondence from 29 September 1929, 12 March 1930, 28 April 1930, 20 May 1930, and 18 September 1930, Betar Supreme Command, Correspondence with the World Revisionist Executive Committee, JI G2/4/1. 151 Lubotzky, “Le-irgun ha-hanhaga ha-olamit be-” Igrot livnei betar, 12 October 1928, p.2.

82 encounters with Polish Jewish youth and Polish Jewry as a whole played a decisive role in how he came to conceive of his role as a leader and the mode of politics that would bring him to power. His articulation of the aims of both Betar and the Revisionist movement drew heavily upon the attitudes and behaviors promoted by the leaders of Poland’s proto-Revisionist youth movements. These movements consciously drew from central features of Poland’s nationalist public culture, including a vehement rejection of socialism, the veneration of military activity and the subordination of the individual in the name of the nation. Most of the World Conference delegates, however, viewed the conference not as a coda, but rather as a point of departure towards unchartered territory. A daunting task loomed over Betar’s leaders in Poland: to connect with scores of branches that were emerging throughout the country, and to provide them with a uniform culture and a clear political program. This was no small feat. In Warsaw alone, there were as many as ten Revisionist youth groups operating simultaneously, each catering to a different social and religious sub-group within the city’s Jewish population.152 In order to become Betar, these leaders would have to determine what values and practices would constitute the core of the youth movement’s internal culture, and how these features of their movement would be presented to the Polish Jewish public at large. It is this quest that the coming chapter explores.

152 “Zirkular 8, Union Des Sionistes-Revisionistes-Zentralburo” 20 April 1928, JI G1/4-4. Unlike Propes, Feldszu advocated for separate groups to be established to cater to the different divisions within Polish Jewish society. See “Din ve-heshbon fun dem 2tn alpoylishn tsiyon. Revizionistishn tsuzamenfar” Cyjon 3, 20 January 1928, p.7.

83 CHAPTER TWO FASCISM AND THE CREATION OF BETAR’S CULTURE

On New Year’s Day, 1929, hundreds of Betar’s members from villages, towns and cities across Poland stood at attention near the corner of Marszałkowska and Jerozolimska, Warsaw’s main thoroughfares that lay on the edge of the Jewish quarter. There, they awaited the signal of the Maccabi orchestra to begin their march towards Warsaw’s Great Synagogue for the opening ceremony of Betar’s First World Conference. At around ten o’clock in the morning, the band’s trumpets and drums sounded, and Betar’s members began their parade up the streets of Twarda and Graniczna, passing the offices of several of the Jewish community’s Zionist and religious organizations. Once they turned onto Tłomackie street, they approached the synagogue. Marching up its wide steps and through its corridor, flanked by four classical columns, they ascended to the synagogue’s balcony, where they draped the flags of their local battalions over the banisters. Below them sat journalists from every major Polish Jewish newspaper in the country. By half past ten, the inauguration ceremony had begun. Rather than choose a Betar leader to open the conference, the ceremony’s organizers took a different course. The synagogue’s cantor rose to the bima, an elevated platform in the center of the synagogue where much of the synagogue’s rituals are performed, and began to chant Jewish prayers. The centerpiece of the ceremony was a lecture delivered in Hebrew and Polish about the value of the Betar youth movement for Poland’s Jews. The synagogue’s rabbi, rather than a member of Betar’s leadership, delivered the lecture.1 As soon as the day’s ceremonies ended, the journalists in attendance raced back to their newspaper’s offices—each one within several blocks of the synagogue—to weigh in on Betar’s debut. Most of them produced detailed and favorable reconstructions of the cantor’s performance and the rabbi’s speech. The socialist and anti-Zionist Bundists,

1 Moshe Yoelson, “Die erste Weltpegischa der Brith-Trumpeldor, Warschau, 1-4.1.1929” JI/B1-14/14; “Di impozante fayerlikhkayt fun brit-trumpeldor in varshe mit der bateyligung fun ze’ev jabotinsky” Haynt 1 January 1929; “Der tsuzamenfar fun brit trumpeldor in varshe” Moment 1 January 1929; “Nekhtige brit- trumpeldor-fayerungen in varshe” Haynt 2 January 1929; “Światowa konferencja Org. “Brith Trumpeldor” Nowy Dziennik 3 January 1929; “Wszechświatowy Zjazd Org. Młodz. “Brith Trumpeldor” w Warszawie” Chwila 5 January 1929, p.9; “Ha-pegisha ha-olamit ha-rishona le-mifkadei betar” Igrot livnei betar 15 July 1929, p.3.

84 however, had something else in store for their readers. Their flagship paper, which had its editorial office around the corner from the Great Synagogue, offered no description of the synagogue’s clergy in their report. The story began, instead: “With astonishment, Jewish Warsaw watched the parade of Zionist fascists across the city.”2 In an oblique reference to the ceremony’s religious content, they warned readers not to be fooled by the youth movement; they may have been marching “with a menorah in hand,”3 but their parade in the Jewish quarter was “their March on Rome,” 4 their leader a “Jewish Mussolini,”5 and its participants “our homegrown fascists.” 6 These were claims that extended far beyond the editorial halls of the Bund’s newspaper. The socialist-Zionist newspaper The Worker’s Voice of Liberation had begun describing Revisionists as fascists several months beforehand.7 From 1929 and beyond, socialist Zionist youth movements across the country increasingly warned of the “Jewish fascism” that Betar threatened to usher into Poland and, ultimately, Palestine.8 These fears were not only the preserve of socialists. Not long after Betar’s arrival on the Polish scene, the president of the Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, allegedly alluded to the youth movement’s connection to by describing its members as “youth with a Roman face.” 9 On the one hand, the Great Synagogue ceremony was designed to refute the claim that Betar was, as one paper put it, “wild and foreign.”10 Betar’s leaders reasoned that if the synagogue’s famed cantor and rabbi would sanctify the movement, there would be no doubt that the group promoted Jewish values. What makes the synagogue ceremony so intriguing, however, is not the message it sought to convey to the Jewish public, but rather the one that it never attempted to produce. When facing the torrent of charges in 1929 that their movement’s members were fashistlekh [“little fascists”], Betar leaders

2 “Jabotinsky makht shtimung far der 5-ter aliya” Naye folktsaytung 2 January 1929. 3 “Ph-leysh!” Naye Folktsaytung, 4 January 1929. 4 Ibid. 5 “Der yudisher Mussolini” Naye folktsaytung 4 January 1929. 6 “Jabotinsky makht shtimung far der 5-ter aliya”. 7 “Tsum fashistishn onfal” Bafrayung arbeter-shtime 26 October 1928. 8 See, for example: “Nider mitn fashistn revisionism” Bafrayung arbeter shtime 28 October 1932; “Oyb nisht nokh nideriker” Unzer frayhayt (11) November 1932, p.1. 9 L. Libertal, “Di roymishe yugnt” 2 May 1930, p. 11. 10 Emma, “Pionirtum un verkraft (der brit trumpeldor)” Tsionistishe bleter Nr.12 (37) 26 July 1929, p. 186.

85 never once deemed it necessary to publicly insist otherwise.11 Over the previous year, many of Betar’s leaders had, in fact, wondered aloud whether or not the term “fascist” best described the aims of their movement. Even as they began to shift their focus from internal ideological discussions to creating public campaigns that portrayed Betar as quintessentially Jewish and Zionist, these conversations did not subside. Rather, the public rituals they created became yet another arena to determine the extent to which they would adopt the militarist and authoritarian values associated with fascism. To do so, Betar’s leaders, like leaders of right-wing movements across Europe, would have to define what the terms “militarism,” “authoritarianism” and, above all, “fascism” meant in the first place. Jabotinsky once described the ways in which socialists stretched the meaning of these terms as “playing with Latin words.”12 This chapter focuses on Betar’s own attempt to play with Latin words, precisely at the very moment that they sought to make these words sound authentically Jewish and Zionist. The difficulty that Betar’s leaders experienced when trying to pin down the meaning of fascism was shared by leaders of right-wing movements throughout interwar Europe. Nearly all turned to the Italian fascist state as their point of reference for determining what constituted fascist beliefs and behaviors. Yet as much as Italian fascists issued bold, brash and sweeping political declarations, they saw little need to present an ideologically seamless and coherent world to their followers, and were constantly redefining their aims and practices.13 When Italian fascists did attempt to formulate a definitive doctrine, their efforts were patchy at best, and never amounted to a systematic

11 The term was used by Betar members in Węgrów, describing the hostility they encountered in town from other Jewish organizations. See “Fun unzer bavegung” Tel Chaj 4, 6 (2 May 1930), p.15. 12 Jabotinsky used the phrase to describe the ways in which Jewish socialists defined the term ‘militarism.’ See “Trumpeldor’s yortsayt” in Propes, Dos lebn fun yosef trumpeldor (Warsaw: 1930), p.v. 13 See Paxton, “The Five Stages of Fascism,” p.10 as well as his most recent book on the subject, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Knopf, 2004), pp.3-23. Paxton’s approach challenges the widely held view that one can describe an ideologically coherent ‘essence’ of fascism. Among the most well-known works to take this approach are Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945; George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964); Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1993); Ze’ev Sternhell et al, The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; Roger Eatwell, Fascism: A History (London: Chatto and Windus, 1995);Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, present, future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

86 framework for Italian fascist political practice.14 As a result, fascist ideology in Italy was replete with contradictions, and in a state of perpetual flux. There was, nonetheless, a repertoire of social, political and economic convictions that Italian fascists consistently drew upon to craft their aims and practices.15 The aim of the Italian Fascist regime was to build a nationalist, authoritarian state that transcended the regional and class divisions that had brought Italy to the brink of civil war in the immediate postwar years. The Italian regime’s leaders believed that the best way to bring about this transformation was by placing militarist values at the center of their country’s political program. They unapologetically insisted that a martial ethos of discipline, order, unity and sacrifice should pervade every aspect of Italian society; they installed a military leadership structure in their political institutions, with their head of state serving as an omnipotent commander; they branded those who refused to join their mobilized society as traitors; and they actively worked to suppress them. They also believed that exalting violence and war, deeds over words, and emotion over reason would be the key to mobilizing the masses. At times reticent to turn violent rhetoric into practice when attempting to mobilize the Italian ‘masses’, they were far more willing to do so when it came to suppressing their perceived enemies, chief among them socialists, communists, and parliamentary democrats. Not only were Betar members well aware of this repertoire; it served as the standard that they and their contemporaries used when talking about and comparing themselves to fascist movements. Rather than measure Betar’s ideology and program throughout the interwar period against a taxonomy of ‘continental fascism’ created decades later by scholars, this chapter measures Betar’s newly forged myths and public

14 For surveys of the struggles to define the term “fascist”, see Payne, Fascism: Comparison and Definition, pp. 3-5; Robert Paxton, “The Five Stages of Fascism” The Journal of Modern History 70,1 (March 1998), pp.1-9; Michael Mann, Fascists (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.5-13; Dylan Riley, The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain and Romania, 1870-1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), pp.2-3. 15 I arrive at the definition of Italian’s Fascism’s repetoire by drawing on the following works; Payne, Fascism, pp.42-51, 68-87; Payne, A History of Fascism, pp.80-128; Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929, 3rd Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Mann, pp.93-137.

87 rituals against the attitudes and behaviors promoted by Fascist Italy in the late 1920s.16 As the chapter compares the proclamations and programs of Betar’s leaders with those of Italian fascists, it does not attempt to brush over the contradictions and complexities that were on full display in their discussions of fascist ideology. Instead, the chapter’s investigation of how Betar leaders tried to frame values associated with Italian fascism as Jewish and Zionist draws attention to how they, like Italian fascists and those who claimed to emulate them, constantly changed their ideological platforms. Paradoxically, the very ambivalence that Betar’s leaders expressed about adopting all of fascism’s political repertoire, and their ultimate willingness to live with the contradictions inherent in their own interpretations of right-wing values echoed Italian Fascist behavior.

What’s the Truth? Defining Fascism in Poland’s Betar “It has to be said fiercely and thus succinctly: we are fascists, Jewish fascists.” 17 With these words, Dr. D. Stabiecki, a Revisionist living in Rome, appealed in November 1928 to Polish Jews reading the party’s new journal The Truth to adopt the politics of Mussolini’s Italy. While similarly bold statements had first appeared in a circular distributed to Betar leaders two months beforehand, Stabiecki’s call was the first to appear in a publication designed to promote the movement.18 He insisted that only an authoritarian state could awaken the Jewish nation’s desire and ability to create a Jewish homeland. Simply exalting their leader, Jabotinsky, was not enough to encourage Jews to perform great deeds. To describe the state of being they would need to reach, Stabiecki invoked Nietzsche’s concept of the “will to power”—the notion that, as Nietzsche put it, “life itself is essentially a process of appropriating, injuring, overpowering the alien and

16Among the most well-known works to take the ‘continental approach’ are Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945; George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964); Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1993); Ze’ev Sternhell et al, The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; Roger Eatwell, Fascism: A History (London: Chatto and Windus, 1995);Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, present, future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 17 Dr. D. Stabiecki, “Vos zaynen mir, mir revizyonistn?” Der Emes 3-4 (7-8), 20 November 1928, pp.6-7. 18 See Ze’ev Shem Tov, Igrot 12 September 1928, p.2. When Stabiecki’s article was published, the journal had only been in circulation for six months. While there are records of Polish police and members of Haszachar describing Betar and the Revisionist movement as fascist from 1926, the fall of 1928 marked the beginning of the movement’s discussions about how to use the term.

88 the weaker…and at least, the very least, exploiting.”19 The ability of ordinary Jews to believe in the state, obey its demands, and fight for its existence could only be cultivated through military training and an “exaltation of physical might.” 20 Physical force, Stabiecki contended, was the highest virtue a nation could strive for, and the only means to prevent socialists and communists from ruling over the Jewish people. Blasting the efforts of the British government to offer proportional political representation to Jews and Arabs living in Palestine, he added that Jewish fascists, while not opposed to democracy per se, would ensure that democratic values did not harm the interests of the Jewish people in Palestine. Any means of action were permissible to suppress those who obstructed the creation of the future Jewish state. The ethical compass of Jewish fascists, willing and able to use physical force in the name of their ideals, followed a simple formula. All that could bring the state into being was permitted. All that would harm it was forbidden. Stabiecki’s article included many of the central tenets of Italian Fascism. This included Fascist Italy’s veneration of the authoritarian state, its call for the subordination of the individual to the ‘will of the nation’, its opposition to democracy, socialism and communism, and its insistence that the nation’s combative spirit and violent deeds were the key to social progress. No less striking was Stabiecki’s use of rhetorical devices frequently deployed by Italian Fascists. As much as Italy’s fascist leaders touted their ability to be direct and even brash—Mussolini once declared that the slogan “me ne frego”21, “I don’t give a damn”, would be the guiding motto of fascist life—they owed a good deal of their success to their ability to be suggestive, even evasive, when it came to describing the type of behaviors that would be necessary to ensure fascism’s triumph. Although Stabiecki had no qualms about using unflinchingly violent rhetoric to describe the need to defeat the external enemies of the future Jewish state, he vaguely described the suppression of internal dissent among Jews as the “harmony of all powers.”22 The everyday experience of fascism was painted as peaceful, liberating, and empowering.

19 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future trans. and ed. by Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p.260. 20 Dr. D. Stabiecki, “Vos zaynen mir, mir revizyonistn?”, p.7. 21 The phrase was originally the slogan of Mussolini’s squadrista in the early 1920s. See Mussolini,The Doctrine of Fascism (New York: Howard Fertig, 1968), p. 19. 22 Stabiecki, Ibid.

89 Furthermore, like Italian fascists, Stabiecki made his rejection of “democracy” conditional upon its definition.23 Mussolini’s regime, in fact, frequently claimed that its system of government offered the purest form of democracy. This counterintuitive assertion required Italian Fascists to radically redefine the meaning of the term. Parliamentary democracies, Mussolini periodically explained, were no more than corrupt regimes whose leaders only looked after their own interests. The fascist leader, in contrast, represented the purest expression of the people’s will; by understanding and meeting their needs far better than anyone else, he would offer an “authoritarian democracy” that empowered them far more than slipping a vote into a ballot box ever could.24 One cannot understand the wealth of positive responses generated by Stabiecki’s proposals among Betar’s early leaders in Poland, or the group’s affinity to Italian fascism in general, without appreciating how central the art of blurring the lines between liberty and subordination, democracy and dictatorship, and submission and empowerment was to the rhetorical practices of Italian Fascist thinkers. When Betar leaders inserted a series of conditional clauses into their calls to embrace fascism, they were simply following the lead of fascist ideologues in Italy. Much like Italian Fascists, there was a spectrum of strategies that Betar leaders and members used when defining their movement as fascist. In the fall of 1928, Ze’ev Szem-Tov, a Betar leader in the southeastern Galician town of Stryj, amplified the Italian regime’s aggressive rhetoric when he called for Betar groups to become fascist. Given the leading article in an early issue of Letters to Betar Members, a magazine designed to help clarify Betar’s program, Szem-Tov described fascism as a worldview that “does not tolerate any other idea and enslaves all the powers of its adherents to its cult.”25 In order make their movement fascist, Betar leaders would have to “educate youth to exhibit…ceaseless discipline,” so they would turn away from the “philosophizing” of left-wing Jews, embrace the cult of “the deed” and be willing to

23 For an excellent discussion of the fascist construction of democracy, see Dylan Riley, The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain, and Romania, 1870-1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). 24 See Mussolini, pp.11-12, 21-25. 25 Ze’ev Shem Tov, Igrot 12 September 1928, p.2.

90 sacrifice their lives in the name of the state.26 This included, Szem-Tov added, a willingness to engage in physical combat with socialists. In contrast, A. Lipman avoided Szem-Tov’s emphasis on discipline and subservience, and emphasized a defensive, rather than offensive ethos. In his popular lecture series, later published in 1931, Lipman instructed Betar leaders to tell their followers that fascism arose out of Mussolini’s desire to defend his nation; with fascist unity, he observed, “even the strongest enemy won’t break us.”27 Moshe Lejzerowicz, chief editor of The Truth and a prominent Betar leader in Warsaw, similarly emphasized the ability of fascism to strengthen the nation. Standing at the podium of the Third All-Polish Revisionist Conference in December 1928, he declared that Revisionists would “agree to such a worldview” so long as “fascism is the symbol of concentrated and determined power that works not for the good of classes but for the good of the entire nation.” 28 The statement managed to allude to both authoritarian rule and opposition to socialism without describing physical confrontation and the suppression of political dissent. Lejzerowicz’s statement also echoed the terms and rhetorical strategies used by Poland’s Sanacja regime. Other Betar leaders mentioned Piłsudski and Mussolini in the same breath.29 Although Piłsudski had worked as hard to suppress Poland’s radical ethno- nationalist Right as he did the radical Left in first three years of his rule, the similarities between the two leaders were not lost on citizens of Poland in the late 1920s. Like Mussolini, Piłsudski had orchestrated a coup d’état and led a national coalition government for several years’ time. By the time Betar leaders were discussing the merits of fascism, several key supporters of the Sanacja were voicing their support for fascism and calling for a dictatorship in Poland.30 Although Piłsudski had insisted at the time of the coup that he did not seek to emulate Mussolini, by 1929, he was spending far more of his time suppressing Poland’s Centre and Left political parties than he was pacifying

26 “Le-birur ha-ra’ayon” Igrot 12 December 1928, p. 4. 27 A. Lipman, “Propagande referat: Halutziut, arbeter-frage, sotzializm, fashizm un unzer yugend” in Revizionistishe grund-problemen fun revizionistishe teoretiker, vol.4 (Warsaw: 1931), p.10, JI/G33/3/2. 28 Lejzerowicz, “Di drite alpoylishe landes-konferents fun di tsionistn-revizyonistn” Der Emes 5-6, 20 February 1929, p. 5. 29 See, for example, Zelig Lerner, “Rekhtlekhe gvaldtetikayt” Tel Chaj 3 (February 1930), p.4. 30 See Antony Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland, 1921-1939: The Crisis of Constitutional Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p.223, 312.

91 Poland’s Right. He also increasingly vented his hostility towards the Polish parliament and constitution in interviews with the Polish press. When asked by one journalist in the spring of 1929 if he would attend Polish parliamentary sessions, he responded, “I will have nothing to do with such [people who] cover themselves with their own excrement.”31 When Moshe Lejzerowicz placed similarly disparaging comments about parliamentary politics next to his description of fascism, conference delegates could easily have drawn a connection between Poland’ Sanacja program and fascist ideology. If Lejzerowicz’s definition of fascism erred on the side of caution by alluding to the Polish government’s political program, his proposal for how to implement fascist ideology was far more provocative. During a rare moment in which discussing practical political strategy took center stage, Lejzerowicz warned his colleagues at the conference: “Let no one talk of fascism. It will be carried out without words and without discussion…the upheaval will be performed, the strong and energetic will stand at the helm…so friends, don’t speak about it, and it will be much easier.”32 The historian can only guess at why Lejzerowicz felt compelled to insist that fascism would only gain the support of the Jewish nation if Revisionists avoided using the term altogether. On the one hand, the statement may simply have betrayed a frustration with the movement’s ongoing attempts to untangle the definition of fascism. What would Italian Fascists, who repeatedly claimed that democrats and socialists were paralyzed by their obsession with words, make of the Revisionist discussions about what ‘fascism’ meant? The statement more likely reflected Revisionist fears of being associated with the antisemitic nationalist movements of Hungary, Romania and elsewhere in Eastern Europe that claimed to emulate Fascist Italy’s policies.33 By 1928, readers of the Polish Jewish press were frequently confronted with numerous reports of violent attacks on Jewish students by fascist-inspired university fraternities in the region. Lejzerowicz’s statement presents an even more daunting question for historians to grapple with: should one take him at his

31 Quoted in Polonsky, p. 276. For Piłsudski’s initial statements on Fascism after the 1926 coup, see W. Baranowski, Rozmowy z Piłsudskim 1916-1931 (Warszawa: 1938), p. 20. 32 Lejzerowicz, Ibid. 33 For a good, if somewhat dated, overview of Hungarian and Romanian Fascist movements, see Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera, The Green Shirts and Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1970).

92 word, and presume that there were many Betar leaders who strategically refrained from publicly declaring their views to be fascist in order for those views to be realized? Many articles published in the Revisionist press about the governance of Palestine and the Zionist Organization could easily be read as attempts to indirectly invoke the fascist values of Mussolini’s Italy. Ben-Szem declared that Revisionists would “refuse to be led by the leash of democracy, socialism or parliamentarism.” 34 For his part, Zelig Lerner, who later became the architect of Betar’s summer camp programs, insisted to Betar’s readers that Piłsudski and Mussolini’s coups d’états were “normal reactions of healthy nations,” and urged them to support “a leader with a few devotees willing to conduct an illegal crime that is later sanctioned by the government.”35 Betar publications frequently reminded the movement’s members that as future citizens of the Jewish state, they were expected to obey the commandments of their leader. These texts also frequently called for the establishment of a leadership cult around Jabotinsky.36 Many Revisionists claimed that Jewish youth naturally longed to submit themselves to a dictator. One could certainly hear echoes of Fascist youth-focused rhetoric in Lejzerowicz’s claim that “postwar youth…want discipline, they want to be obedient, they want to be led; all it takes is a few demagogues to slip into a youth organization and exert tremendous influence.”37 Like Italian Fascists, Betar leaders often referred to the natural predisposition of youth towards dictatorship in order to justify the Revisionist program’s authoritarian components. Other evidence, however, calls into question the value of using Lejzerowicz’s command as a way of understanding the ways in which Betar’s early leaders envisioned their mission. An examination of Feldszu’s blueprint for Betar’s educational programs, produced in the fall of 1928, illustrates just how difficult it is to gauge whether or not the

34 Reuwen Ben-Szem, Oyf Der Vokh” Der Emes 2 (6), 28 September1928, p.3. 35 Lerner, Ibid. 36 See, for example, A. Propes, “Unzer firer” Tel Chaj 9 (October 1930), p. 3. Calls for a leadership cult would increase in the 1930s. See “Problemy kulturalno-wychowawcze w Hachoarze” Trybuna Narodowa 25 January 1935. 37 Lejzerowicz, “Unzer yugnt” Der Emes 17 August 1928, p.13. Significantly, the “demagogues” Lejzerowicz was referring to were Communists; his article aimed to analyze the appeal of the radical Left for Jewish youth.

93 blueprints for Betar’s activity were fascist.38 On the one hand, key features of Fascist Italy’s ideological repertoire frequently appeared in Feldszu’s program. Its introduction declared a war on communism; the first rule to be followed by Betar members was to obey commandments unconditionally; descriptions of the value of iron discipline and sacrifice at work and on the battlefield abounded. On the other hand, the term “fascist” appeared neither here nor in any other of the youth movement’s early programs. Feldszu’s bibliography offered no mention of Mussolini or the handbooks of the Opera Nazionale Ballila, the official Fascist youth movement established in 1926. Polish scouting textbooks, as well as English scouting textbooks in Polish translation, were the core supplementary readings. Feldszu also suggested books by Ellen Key, Janusz Korczak and other luminaries of the progressive education movement. These thinkers rejected obedience and discipline as the foundation of effective teaching, and encouraged teachers instead to cultivate a sense of freedom and autonomy among their young disciples.39 Feldszu’s treatment of war and violence was similarly perplexing. Although he insisted that Betar’s program was “far from militaristic,” he instructed members to undertake military training and emphasized that they were obligated to learn to use firearms and know offensive in addition to defensive combat techniques.40 The booklet, however, never mentioned who it was that Betar members would be fighting. In all of Betar’s literature published before 1929, discussions of violence as a key to social progress—whether labeled as fascist or not—never included any descriptions of attacks against Arabs in Palestine. If any enemy did materialize in their discussions of physical force, it was the Jewish Left. Despite the Revisionist claim that they were the only Zionist movement to confront the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine head-on, they, like

38 Reuwen Feldszu (Ben-Szem), Betar be-polanya: Igrot ha-mifkada ha-rashit mispar alef: Tarshim tochnit ha-avoda (arbayts-plan) (Warsaw: October 1928). 39 Significantly, however, radical right-wing movements in interwar Europe came to use many of the principles and practices promoted by progressive education theorists to instill values promoted by Fascist Italy among their youngest recruits. A Betar handbook in 1934, for example, used these theorists to promote right-wing values by insisting that leaders nurture a desire for discipline and subservience among Betar members, rather than coerce them to obey their orders. See, for example, E.A. Miller, “Il Fascismo, Italian Education and the Church” The School Review, 38,7 (September 1930), p.518 and Hanna Libertal. Sefer nesharim: sefer-ezer le-rashei ha-darga alef shel brit-trumpeldor, helek alef (Warsaw: Hotsa’at ha- shilton ve-netsivut betar be-polanya, 1934), pp.5-8. 40 Feldszu, Ibid., p. 4.

94 other Zionists, were often silent when it came to describing what physical confrontation would look like. Furthermore, like other Zionists, many Revisionist leaders in late 1920s Poland insisted that their intentions were neither to settle land already inhabited by Arabs, nor to expel them from the country. Were it not for Arab opposition to a Jewish state, they argued, the Zionist project would proceed peacefully and provide tremendous benefit to the local population.41 Any investigation of whether or not Betar’s leaders were fascists must dwell at length on the ways they imagined the role of violence in their movement. Some scholars of fascism have argued that the difference between interwar authoritarian and fascist movements hinged upon whether or not the movements viewed violence against ethnic enemies of the state as the key to the nation’s redemption, that is, as a cleansing, and even pleasurable experience.42 On the one hand, there is good reason to question these scholars’ emphasis on violence as fascism’s defining criteria. Despite the frequent allusions of Italian fascist ideologues to war and violence, and despite the fact that violence against left-leaning labor organizations played a decisive role in Mussolini’s seizure and consolidation of power, the Fascist regime, once in place, neither encouraged nor exerted wide-scale violence against its subjects.43At the same time, however, there is no doubt that the exaltation and practice of violence was one of the first images conjured

41 See, for example, “Fartraybt di idishe kolonizatsye dem araber fun bodn?” Tel Chaj 3(5) 1 April 1930, p.13 and Ya’akov Kahan’s speech at the Third All-Polish Revisionist Conference, “Di drite alpoylishe landes-konferents fun di tsionistn-revizyonistn” Der Emes 5-6, 20 February 1929, pp. 2-3. 42 Michael Mann, for example, argues that what separates fascism from authoritarianism is its use of paramilitary violence. Mann, pp.2, 10. 43 Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, pp.135-136. Nearly all studies that describe Italian Fascist violence focus on the years leading to the consolidation of Mussolini’s power, the Italian Fascist campaign in Ethiopia in 1936 and the Italian occupation of various locations in southeastern Europe during the Second World War. Little research has been conducted on the use of violence from 1926-1936. See Adrian Lyttelton, “Fascism and Violence in Post-War Italy: Political Strategy and Social Conflict” in Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld, eds., Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe (London: Macmillan with Berg Publishers for the German Historical Institute, 1982), pp. 257-274 and Jens Petersen, “Violence in Italian Fascism, 1919-1925” Ibid., pp.275-299. I limit my definition of violence to “the exercise of physical force in order to injure, control, or intimidate others” Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., sv. “violence,” n. (1a) and “violent,” adv. (3a). This is in contrast to the recent work of Michael R. Ebner, which adds to this definition “state practices which, although technically legal, were so broadly defined in the legislation and applied with such executive discretion that they can hardly be said to have been bound by the law.” This includes, according to Ebner, the “trauma of poverty, which the police state knowingly and sometimes deliberately inflicted on wives and children of detainees”, the “revocation of business permits” and the like. See Ebner, Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp.3-4.

95 up by Europeans, including European Jews, when discussing fascist behavior. Betar leaders spent much of their early publicity campaigns explaining to the Jewish public how the place of violence in Betar’s program differed from the violent rhetoric and practices of European antisemitic paramilitary movements. As much as they questioned whether or not the term “fascist” best described their program, Betar’s leaders wondered in equal measure whether or not their movement would benefit from describing itself as “militarist.” On the one hand, leaders writing in 1928 rarely felt compelled to justify their support of most of the tenets of militarism. They unapologetically insisted that military discipline, order and unity should characterize every aspect of civil society; that their national home should maintain strong military capability; and that military interests should play a central role in government affairs. Matters were altogether different, however, when it came to describing military engagement as one of the best—if not the best—way to promote national interests. Zionists across the political spectrum shared their discomfort with discussing in detail the role that organized violence would play in realizing the Zionist project. While Zionist leaders may have looked with admiration upon certain features of non-Jewish nationalist cultures developing across the region, they were horrified by the tendency of many of these movements to promote anti-Jewish violence.44 Jabotinsky, for instance, wrote a series of essays throughout his prewar career as a Russian journalist opposing Polish nationalism on the grounds that its leaders believed that inciting hostility against Jews, physical or otherwise, was the best way to promote their national interests.45 Many of Betar’s potential recruits in Poland, and most certainly their parents, experienced the link between violence and nationalism firsthand, when they witnessed the brutal anti- Jewish violence carried out by Ukrainian and (to a lesser extent) Polish nationalists in the Polish borderlands in 1918 and 1919, leaving tens of thousands dead. This violence was often invoked by Zionists when explaining the value of their movement. They contended that Zionism existed not only to support of principle of Jewish self-determination, but also to help Jews defend themselves against violent persecution. How could Betar’s leaders describe their approach to the use of military force in a way that would distance

44 Anita Shapira, Land and Power, p.vii. 45 The most famous of these essays was entitled “Dialogue,” published in 1912. See Jabotinsky, Ketavim: Feuletonim, pp. 139-149.

96 them as much as possible from nationalists who had killed tens of thousands of Jews a decade prior? And what moral value would Zionism hold if it produced rather than prevented the same type of violence it had pledged to defend Jews against?

Jabotinsky and Fascism Although famously prolific, Jabotinsky was entirely absent from discussions among Polish Revisionist leaders about the meaning and value of fascism.46 Of the dozens of articles to appear in Der Emes between 1928-1929, Jabotinsky only contributed two of them. This was, however, not out of character. While Jabotinsky weighed in on ideological debates at various intervals throughout the movement’s history, expecting his views to be the last word, he generally avoided debates as they evolved. This was especially true when it came to debates that moved beyond the confines of his close circle of Revisionist confidantes in Paris and London. Much of his absence from these public discussions was due to his temperament and self-perception. As the previous chapter demonstrated, Jabotinsky conceived of himself, above all else, as a journalist whose strength lay in the power of his prose and oratory. The world of local politicians, debating among themselves about the Revisionist party’s ideology and program, seemed at once irritating and intellectually numbing. His reticence to engage in the daily grind of political meetings not only had implications for the development of Betar in Poland, but also for the ideological and administrative discussions of Revisionist political leaders elsewhere. That is not to say, however, that Jabotinsky did not wrestle with the place of fascism and militarism in his movement. He had, in fact, been preoccupied with the meaning of both “isms” long before Betar had come into being. One of the first plays written by Jabotinsky in his adolescence contained, perhaps surprisingly, a staunch critique of militarism.47 Like Betar’s early leaders in Poland, Jabotinsky’s relationship with fascism was ambivalent. In the first years of the Revisionist movement, when much of the party’s program consisted of attacks on Weizmann’s strong-armed control of the

46 The first critiqued the Jewish Agency, and the second endorsed a British politician’s proposal to have Palestine become the British Empire’s seventh dominion. See Jabotinsky, “Der emes vegn unz” Der Emes 17 August 1928, and “Vegn wedgewood’s idée” Der Emes 20 November 1928. 47 Stanislawski, p.140.

97 Zionist Organization, Jabotinsky portrayed himself as the consummate democrat. His articles in Rassvyet castigated European Jewry for what he perceived to be their blind faith in Weizmann, and even went so far as to label Weizmann’s politics a brand of “fascist Zionism.”48 Yet prior to his split with the Zionist Organization, Jabotinsky told Weizmann during a trip to Italy in 1922 that Zionists would be able to find a “common language” with several Italian fascist leaders.49 Perhaps bearing in mind his comments to Weizmann, he wrote to Mussolini that very same day and explained Zionist behavior in the following way: “If you want to understand our level of vitality, please study your own fascists and add only some tragedy, some tenacity—perhaps more experience.”50 If Jabotinsky was ambivalent about the relationship between fascism and Zionism, he was far closer to his Polish Jewish followers in his approach to militarism, especially when it came to describing Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine. Although he insisted, much to the chagrin of his former Zionist Organization colleagues, that the creation of a Jewish state would be impossible without the presence of a military force to protect Jews from Arab attacks, he was always careful to avoid describing military engagement with Arabs as inevitable. Instead, he insisted that the mere presence of a Jewish military would act as a deterrence force, preventing, rather than creating violence. In his most famous essay on the topic, he suggested that a Jewish army would be like an “Iron Wall”—strong, static and able to protect Jews without any exertion of force.51 By 1929, however, when Jabotinsky began turning his growing interest in Polish Jewish youth movements into a vigorous effort to shape Betar’s ideological program, his positions on both fascism and militarism evolved. Changing conditions in both Europe and Palestine provoked his reassessment of both topics. What was once a fledgling fascist movement in Italy had become—at least in the eyes of much of Europe—a robust,

48 “Ha-tsionut ha-fashistit” in Ha-revizionizm ha-tsioni be-hitgabshuto, pp.124-130, originally published in Rassvyet 20 December 1925. “Die faschistische Richtung im Zionismus” Revisionistische Blätter 1 July 1927, pp.1-13, “Zionist Fascism” The Zionist Vol 1, No.4, 25 June 1926, pp.38-39. 49 Letter from Jabotinsky to Weizmann, 21 July 1922 in Igrot vol. 3, p.341. 50 Letter from Jabotinsky to Mussolini, 21 July 1922, Alfonso Pacifici Archive (P172)/110, CAHJP. The letter is cited in Vincenzo Pinto, “Between imago and res: The Revisionist-Zionist Movement’s Relationship with Fascist Italy, 1922-1938” Israel Affairs 10, 3 (2004), p. 93. The letter is dated 16 July 1922 in Igrot., vol. 3. 51 “Die eiserne Wand (Wir und die Araber),” Menorah, 1, 5 (November 1923), pp.1-3. See also “Die Ethik der eiserne Wand” Menorah 1, 6, December 1923, pp. 2-3.

98 successful regime. From 1928 onwards, Jabotinsky received letters from activists in Italy and Palestine insisting that Fascist Italy had much to teach him, from its relationship to religious authorities to its construction of a leadership cult for Mussolini.52 By that point, Jabotinsky’s written denunciations of Weizmann as a fascist had long vanished, giving way instead to a series of evasive comments about fascism. In a 1929 interview in Lwów, for example, he dodged the question of whether or not fascism provided the most effective form of government. When further pressed to describe the ideology, he limited his critique of fascism to the leadership cult of Mussolini; fascism’s crucial flaw, he explained, was that the death of a brilliant political leader could leave the nation in the hands of a blundering successor.53 The statement was hardly a comprehensive critique of Mussolini’s Italy, and may have elliptically suggested that there was much to admire in the Italian dictator’s leadership. Just as he never criticized Mussolini, Jabotinsky also never publicly rejected the Italian fascist movement’s centralization of power, its call for the subordination of the individual’s will to that of the state, its suppression of unions and strikes, its limits on freedom of speech, or the military ethos that guided its actions. Jabotinsky even began to echo the Italian leader’s call for his followers to forge a new “psychological race.” 54 His writing about fascism in his private correspondence reflected these changes. To an admirer in the summer of 1930, he tempered his declaration that “the cult of the Duce awakens disgust in me,” by noting that “Fascism has many good

52 Wolfgang Von Weisl to Jabotinsky, 20 January 1927, JI/A1/3/15; Abba Achimeir to Jabotinsky, 25 October 1928, JI/A1/3/16/2, Haim Verdi to Jabotinsky, 30 May 1929, JI/A1/3/17/2. 53 “Rozmowa z wodzem rewizjonizmu” Chwila 4 January 1929, p.11. See also “Ha-bhirot be-polin” in Ha- revizionism ha-tsioni be-hitgabshuto, pp.273-275, originally published in Rassvyet 18 March 1928. 54 Although Jabotinsky had used the term “race” to describe Jewish youth in his correspondence from 1927, he only began to use the term in published articles that described Revisionist ideology in 1929. He claimed to have learned the term from his Italian Jewish friend Haim Verdi. See Jabotinsky to ‘Youth of Włocławek’ 29 March 1927; Jabotinsky to Haim Verdi, 2 May 1929; Jabotinsky, “Ha-gezah she-ba-ru’ah” Doar Hayom 24 May 1929, p.2; Jabotinsky, “Psyikhologishe rasn” Haynt 24 August 1930. Keeping with Mussolini’s use of the term, and in contrast to right-wing ethno-nationalists elsewhere, Jabotinsky’s call for a new race steered clear of claiming that racial identity was defined by one’s blood. The term was also used almost exclusively to describe Zionist Revisionists, rather than as a way to depict (and denigrate) the ‘enemies of the nation.’ The notion of Jewish racial superiority, for example, never appeared in Jabotinsky’s writing. This was in contrast to Mussolini, who on occasion wrote of the superiority of the “white” and “western” races. It should also be added that the frequency with which the term appeared in Betar publications in this period mirrored that of Italian Fascists; while the term “race” was used on occasion, it was far from a central feature of the movements’ ideologies. On the use of racial categories in 1920s Italy, see R.J.B. Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Dictatorship (London: Allen Lane, 2005), p.243; Emil Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini (London: Allen and Unwin, 1932), p.75; Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 2001), p. 20.

99 ideas.” Upon further reflection, he continued, there were several points in the development of the Revisionist movement at which he should have exerted greater power over his colleagues.55 As Jabotinsky watched the rising success of right-wing politics in Italy with curiosity and some admiration, he anxiously noted the growing fortunes of the Left in Palestine. In contrast to Palestine’s Revisionist movement, which continued to struggle to attract members, Labor Zionists not only boasted a membership of tens of thousands in Palestine, but also had created a political infrastructure that had become the Yishuv’s de- facto administrative power. By 1927, the General Federation of Laborers in the (Histadrut ha-klalit shel ha-ovdim be’eretz yisra’el) helped its members find employment, provided them with health care, education and aid in finding housing. By 1927, the Histadrut counted twenty-five thousand members, representing roughly three- quarters of Palestine’s Jewish workforce. It had become the largest and strongest institution for absorbing Jewish immigrants in Palestine. The hegemony of Labor Zionists within the Zionist movement appeared to many if not most Zionists to be a fait accompli by 1929. It was against this backdrop that Jabotinsky began to draw closer to Italian Fascist ideology by envisioning a war against the Jewish Left as a key feature of his movement. Between April and August 1929, he exchanged a series of letters with some of his closest collaborators in which he argued that confrontation with Labor Zionists was inevitable. By that point, a series of skirmishes between Revisionist and Labor Zionist workers competing for the same jobs had broken out in Palestine. To his friend Yeshayahu Klinov, Jabotinsky insisted that the Zionist Left had initiated the physical confrontations between Revisionist and socialist and workers, arguing further that they “organically hate us, and by necessity. In their eyes, it’s either them or us.” This was, he insisted, the natural, inevitable order of things: “What can we give them, when our entire ideology works towards cancelling budgets, condemning strikes, and balance between the classes…we can change the tone, argue with them in an academic style that is not as sharp…and it won’t change a thing.”56 To Joseph Schechtman, one of the founding

55 Jabotinsky to Miriam Lang, 27 August 1930. 56 Jabotinsky to Yeshayahu Klinov 19 August 1929.

100 members of the Revisionist movement and editor of its main Yiddish-language journal, Jabotinsky repeated his assertion of an intractable conflict—“we can’t conduct election publicity without inciting against them, and even if we kept silent, they would have to incite against us.” 57 These series of letters also marked the first time in his private correspondence that Jabotinsky urged his colleagues to think about members of left-wing Zionist movements as Bolsheviks.58 He insisted that the Zionist Left was, like its Bolshevik muse, violent and radical by nature. One of the chief aims of the Revisionist movement, he explained, would be to expose “the red flag with its true symbol: gallows and a noose.”59 Military language that had once been reserved by Jabotinsky to describe the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine was now mobilized to describe the Revisionist movement’s campaign against the Left. According to the Revisionist leader, the Jewish Left, like Arabs, had an instinctive hatred for Zionism (at least as it was envisioned by Revisionists) and would stop at nothing to achieve its goals. He insisted that no amount of reasoning with left-wing Zionists would lessen their organic and intractable hostility towards Revisionists. There was no other option but to fight the Jewish Left, just as there was no other option but to fight Arabs. Indeed, during these months, Jabotinsky also began to allude to the inevitability and necessity of an armed battle against Arabs. This change was largely precipitated by the evolving Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. Over the course of the last two weeks of August 1929, a longstanding dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the in Jerusalem erupted into a series of violent riots throughout central Palestine. Armed with sticks, knives and guns, Arab mobs descended upon Jewish neighborhoods, destroying property and killing Jewish bystanders. As the British government would later admit, the inadequacy of British defense forces, who struggled for days to gain control of the situation, played no small role in the escalating violence.60 By the time the riots subsided, one hundred and thirty-three Jews had been killed by Arab

57 Jabotinsky to Joseph Schecthman, 30 May 1929. 58 See, for example, Jabotinsky to Schechtman, 20 July 1929. 59 Jabotinsky to Chaim Blilowski, 2 May 1929. 60 Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929 (London: H.M.S.O., 1930), p.145.

101 rioters. Arab casualties, totalling one hundred and sixteen, were mostly attributed to their confrontations with British military personnel. Although the official British investigation of the 1929 riots blamed much of the violence on Arab leaders, it also blamed Zionists for the unrest, pointing to the call of many Zionist leaders to only hire Jewish workers as a cause of incitement. The British government singled out Revisionist journalists and Betar youth in Palestine for the outbreak of the riots. In contrast to Zionist leaders in the Yishuv, who in the weeks leading up to the riot urged Jews not to respond to sporadic attacks by Arabs at the Western Wall, a Revisionist weekly in Palestine urged Jews to join in protest and claim the Western Wall as their own. On a Jewish holiday commemorating the destruction of the , Jewish youth, among whom were several Betar members, marched to the wall under heavy British guard, raised the Zionist flag, and sang an anthem. Both the Zionist Organization and the British government accused the protestors of bearing much of the responsibility for the riots, which broke out eight days after their protest. As punishment, the British government decided in early 1930 to ban Jabotinsky from returning to Palestine. For the rest of his political career, Jabotinsky would have to fend off claims that he could not serve as a Zionist figurehead because of his inability to understand the political reality “on the ground” in Palestine. Despite the immense disappointment Jabotinsky expressed at the news of being banned from Palestine, he and others within the Revisionist movement felt emboldened to launch a new publicity campaign. In a letter sent to a Revisionist activist in the wake of the riots, Jabotinsky wrote, “With the exception of the massacre of students in , the number of sacrifices is small, despite the complete absence of the [British] army. The [notion of] “settlements burning” is also nonsense—one needs thousands of tins of kerosene in order to burn settlements, in which even the floors are built of stone. All of this will be useful to us from a political point of view, so relax; but to the outside, 61 we need to show shock.” Now that his forecast of crisis appeared as if it had been realized, the political tides, he reasoned, would turn in their favor. Revisionist leaders also believed that the riots allowed them to discuss fascist and militarist ideals without having to wrestle with the terms themselves. Towards the end of 1929, Betar leaders in

61 Jabotinsky to Alexander Poliakov, 28 August 1929.

102 Warsaw, for instance, told members that the riots allowed them to “openly speak about it [the creation of Jewish armed forces] without being denounced as a militarist and fascist.”62 It remained a challenge, however, to talk about the movement’s martial ethos— directed against both Arabs and the Left—in terms that would be more palatable to the Jewish public at large and potential young recruits in particular. It was no coincidence that attempts to forge a standardized response to these questions dramatically increased with the rise in membership. By the summer of 1930, Revisionist internal reports estimated that membership within Poland’s Betar had nearly tripled in the wake of the riots, reaching three hundred branches and twelve thousand members.63 Over the course of the year, Aaron Propes, the newly-arrived Head Commander of Poland’s Betar, had begun to organize regional conferences throughout the country, where he presented Betar’s plans for engaging the broader Jewish public. In its quest to gain recognition, and with of achieving dominance in Jewish communities across Poland, Betar had to convince its recruits that any of the youth movement’s values that echoed Fascist Italy’s ideological repertoire were not simply borne out of the immediate crisis, but were natural, instinctive and timeless for any Jew who longed for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. In short, Betar’s leaders had to make these ideas Zionist and Jewish. To do so, Betar turned to the memory of its namesake, Joseph Trumpeldor, to help forge a youth movement culture that would embody Jewish, Zionist and fascist ideals at one and the same time. If Trumpeldor was to serve as their model and muse, however, Betar’s leaders would have to confront features of his life that posed a direct challenge to their very program. They also continued to face the challenge of defining the nature of their movement’s relationship to fascism. Rather than use Trumpeldor to arrive at a stable definition of fascism—in particular, its approach to violence—Betar’s leaders found themselves deliberately reproducing the very tensions in interpretation that had characterized their discussions over the previous year.

62 “Yoman” Tel Hai, 1 December 1929, p. 3. 63 “Des Mifkada Eljona des Brit-Trumpeldor an die IV. Weltkonferenz der Union der Zionisten Revisionisten 1929-August 1930” JI/B1/3/3.

103 Making Fascist Values Zionist? The Legend of Joseph Trumpeldor and Tel Hai

At the end of February 1929, Aharon Propes, Betar’s new leader in Poland, mailed out his first command to over one hundred Betar branches across the country. Their task, he wrote, was to stage a public commemoration of Joseph Trumpeldor’s death.64 For one złoty, they could purchase Propes’ very own biography of the famed Jewish soldier, tailored specifically for Poland’s Betar members, and perform its content at memorial services in Trumpeldor’s honor. Ten months later, Betar members throughout Poland received the first copy of Betar’s national journal. Its name, Tel Hai, paid homage to the Jewish settlement where Trumpeldor, along with eight others, was killed in 1920 by roaming Arab bandits from a nearby village. The journal called, once again, for Betar members to stage memorial services. Tel Hai’s editor explained the significance of the site of Trumpeldor’s death for Betar’s publicity campaigns: “Tel Hai is a symbol that creates the very content of the movement’s identity….[it] provides a satisfactory answer to the claim that ‘there is no meaning in their death just as there is no meaning in their lives.’”65 The staging of Trumpeldor memorial events, in other words, was meant to provide the Jewish public in cities and market towns scattered across central and eastern Poland with a clear performance of the aims of the Betar movement, and its value for the Jewish public. Within the movement’s ranks, Betar members were expected to greet and bid farewell to one another with the phrase “Tel Hai,” and to hang Trumpeldor’s supposed last words, “It is good to die for one’s country,” above the doorposts of their clubs. 66 His death was meant to provide the framework for any conversation or activity that would ensue within the movement. Trumpeldor was, in other words, central to the performance—both public and private—of Betar’s group identity. What was it about Trumpeldor that led Betar leaders to tell their followers to use his life and death as a compass for their own attitudes and behaviors? On the one hand, Trumpeldor was a natural choice for a Zionist movement seeking to expand its social base. By the time Betar arrived on the scene in Poland, Trumpeldor had long been a cult figure among Zionist youth movements across the political spectrum. He had gained

64 “Pkudah alef: Tsu ale kenim fun Betar in Poyln” 26 February, 1929, JI B-33/4/2. 65 Dr. I Dralicz “Tsu aykh (A briv tsu di bney betar)” Tel Chaj 1 December 1929 p. 3. 66 The phrase, taken from the Roman poet ’s Odes (“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”), was supposedly uttered by Trumpeldor in Hebrew.

104 fame in the Zionist world for his military exploits: first in Russia, where he had lost his right arm during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), and later as the leader of the Zion Mule Corps, a forerunner of the Jewish Legion, during the First World War. It was Trumpeldor’s death while defending Tel Hai from an attack of Arab bandits, however, that made him a cult figure for Zionist youth movements. By the mid-1920s, rival Zionist youth groups across Palestine joined together in pilgrimage to his gravesite. Even before his death, Trumpeldor himself sought to unify competing Zionist factions. He-Halutz [The Pioneer], an organization he founded in 1918, came to serve as an umbrella organization for Zionist youth movements in interwar Poland who sought to provide agricultural training to their members. Betar’s leaders hoped that Trumpeldor’s widespread popularity among Jewish youth would entice them to take an immediate interest in the movement. Already considered an advocate of coalition politics, he could prove useful to Betar as a symbol of their oft-repeated call to rise above internecine Zionist conflict and create a unified front. Trumpeldor also gave the movement an unmistakable Zionist imprimatur; his name alone would help ward off claims that Betar was a foreign intruder on the “Jewish street.” Trumpeldor’s popularity among Polish Jewish youth would prove especially useful to Jabotinsky. Having worked closely with Trumpeldor to create the Jewish Legion, Jabotinsky could claim that the man so beloved by Zionist youth movements across the political spectrum would undoubtedly have approved of his call to train Jewish youth to serve in Palestine. Betar’s use of Trumpeldor as its icon, however, was not without complications. Although Jabotinsky had worked with Trumpeldor from 1915 through 1917 to create a Jewish Legion, the two men were far from kindred spirits. When Trumpeldor returned to Russia after the February Revolution, they ceased keeping one another informed of their activities; after September 1917, there is no record of correspondence between the two men.67 Three years later, Jabotinsky mentioned Trumpeldor in a letter that criticized Russian Zionist leaders living in Palestine. Writing of Trumpeldor’s idea to form He- Halutz and to advocate for a Legion, he quipped, “When someone has two plans, I don’t believe in either one of them.”68 Even more problematic was the fact that in the same

67 See Carpi, ed. Igrot, vols 2 and 3. 68 Jabotinsky to Meir Grossman, 3 November 1919, Igrot vol. 3, p. 100.

105 year, Jabotinsky had called for Trumpeldor and other workers in Tel Hai to evacuate the settlement, believing that they would be unable to resist an attack by Arab bandits. Labor Zionist leaders often recalled this incident to prove that Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor were opponents. The incident also helped the Zionist Left cast Jabotinsky as a hypocrite who displayed cowardice instead of courage when the need for self-defense arose. Most problematic, however, was the fact that Trumpeldor had been a socialist from the beginning of his Zionist activity until his death. Although Trumpeldor had called for his organization He-Halutz to value Zionists who were not members of the working class, he nonetheless saw socialists as the ideal Zionist pioneers, and called for Jewish society in Palestine to be modeled upon socialist principles.69 By 1928, He-Halutz was under the direct control of the Labor Zionist organization Ha-Kibbutz Ha-me’uchad in Palestine. Two years later, He-Halutz took the socialist Zionist youth groups Haszomer Hacair and Gordonia under its wing. By that point, the concept of the halutz, the pioneer, was considered the exclusive domain of the Zionist Left, for whom the term denoted a type of Jew as well as a formula for the success of the Zionist project. The ideal of the Halutz embodied the Labor Zionist belief that the Zionist project would succeed only if Jews worked the land and created a socialist society in Palestine. Trumpeldor more than once insisted that the Jewish homeland would be built first and foremost by Jewish laborers.70 His program for He-Halutz also explicitly stated that the self-defense units would have to be made up of socialists, in order to prevent a “militarist” ethos from spreading among Zionists.71 How could Revisionist youth movement leaders who envisioned a war against socialists and Arabs as a crucial feature of their program use Trumpeldor as their hero and claim to be the pioneers he had called for? In order to make Trumpeldor the ideal figure of the Zionist Right, Betar’s leaders would need to recast his life, his death and his vision of the ideal pioneer. These reinventions also entailed determining which fascist values the movement’s leaders could immediately and unequivocally declare to be features of their movement, and which ones needed to be accompanied by qualifications.

69 See Trumpeldor’s reprinted 1918 program for Hehalutz, “Hehalutz, zayn mehus un zayne oyfgabn” republished in Massuot 1 April 1928, pp.3-10. 70 Trumpeldor, Ibid., pp.7-8. 71 p.9.

106 In Jabotinsky’s first effort to reconfigure Trumpeldor’s life, he attempted to prove that the He-Halutz founder’s vision of the new pioneer consisted above all of youth who would relinquish their individual will to serve the needs of the nation and lead a life of obedience, discipline and sacrifice. Rather than draw from Trumpeldor’s He-Halutz writings, which included several potentially useful passages describing the need for the new pioneer to obey the commands of the organization, Jabotinsky chose instead to reconstruct—and quite possibly invent—a conversation they had in 1916. Writing a decade later about their joint exploits in the Jewish Legion, Jabotinsky recalled how Trumpeldor envisioned the ideal pioneer to be “a piece of iron without a crystallized form. Iron, from which everything which the national machine requires should be made.” According to Jabotinsky, Trumpeldor imagined the ideal Zionist pioneer declaring, “I have no feelings, no psychology, no name of my own. I am a servant of Zion…”.72 Jabotinsky elaborated upon the meaning of his exchange with Trumpeldor in an afterword to Trumpeldor’s 1918 He-Halutz program, published in a Betar journal ten years later. “A pioneer,” Jabotinsky explained, “is no more than the full, pure realization of the concept of service and national sacrifice, of the abnegation of the individual on society’s altar—don’t forget this.”73 While this explanation echoed Jabotinsky’s depiction of his conversation with Trumpeldor in 1916, it also neutralized passages from Trumpeldor’s Halutz program that had appeared only several pages earlier. These passages dismissed the concepts of “iron discipline,” giving up all personal desires, and the will to suffer for the nation as no more than expressions of elitist romanticism expressed by students.74 Not surprisingly, most of Betar’s leaders avoided these passages and others penned by their iconic hero, choosing instead to invoke Jabotinsky’s account of Trumpeldor’s vision for the pioneer. Jabotinsky’s retelling of his exchange with Trumpeldor served several functions. First, by using the metaphor of iron “without a crystallized form,” Jabotinsky created a rhetorical bridge between Trumpeldor’s concept of pioneering and his own call for an

72 The Story of the Jewish Legion trans. Shmuel Katz (New York: B. Ackerman, 1945), p.90. Originally published in weekly installments in Haynt and Morgn Zhurnal Between November 1926 and December 1927, and first published as a book in Russian as Slovo o polku in 1928. 73 Jabotinsky, “Shalosh he-arot” Massuot 1 April 1928, p.10. 74 Trumpeldor, Ibid., p. 8.

107 “Iron Wall.” Revisionist leaders could thus instruct potential youth movement recruits that Betar’s program for a militarized society was not merely a program of self-defense to be implemented at times of war, but was a guide to be followed for everyday life in Palestine. Secondly, by placing on Trumpeldor’s lips the oft-repeated calls of Europe’s radical Right for obedience, discipline and self-abnegation, Jabotinsky implied that the Revisionist movement’s vision of a mobilized, militarized society was an expression of Trumpeldor’s core values, and by extension, the values of Jewish youth who revered him. No less significant was Jabotinsky’s suggestion that Jewish youth joined He-Halutz of their own free will and embraced their role as obedient servants to the Zionist project. In a rhetorical move that resembled the muddling of concepts such as liberty and subservience among Italian fascists, Jabotinsky insisted here and elsewhere that Betar did not compel Jewish youth to lead militarized lives, but rather nurtured their innate desires for discipline, order and obedience.75 Perhaps most important was the fact that Jabotinsky inserted himself into the narrative of He-Halutz’s ideological formation. In the scene staged by Jabotinsky, he was both Trumpeldor’s confidant and successor. With Trumpeldor’s death, Jabotinsky was entrusted with the vision of his fallen comrade and dutybound to mold Jewish youth in his friend’s image. Betar leaders in Poland elaborated upon Jabotinsky’s re-imagining of the Halutz as a soldier and the Yishuv as a militarized society. Hen-Melekh Merchavia, a twenty- nine year old Betar leader from the northeastern industrial city of Białystok, published a ninety page booklet in 1930 that used the image of the Halutz to provide a Revisionist roadmap for the Yishuv’s construction. Here, the Halutz was cast as a soldier in a militarized, mobilized society in which every act, from buying food to working the land, was an act of war. The pioneer needed to behave “like a soldier on the front, working zealously, always under the command of the…state [and] its leadership, always a master of complete and full discipline.”76 In the ideal pioneer society, Merchavia continued, “everything will be a front, there will be no private or public space, every place will be a

75 This was one of the key points in his publicity campaign during Betar’s First World Conference in January 1929. See “Vegn militarizm” Haynt 15 January 1929. 76 Hen Melekh Merchavia, Likrat Ha-medina: le-she’elot he-halutziyut ve-ha-binyan (Białystok: M. Prużanski, 1930), p.8.

108 place to conquer, a frontline, every citizen a defender, a builder, a settler.”77 In this perpetual state of crisis, the citizen would not have rights, but rather obligations. By insisting that Zionism’s success depended upon envisioning the daily construction of Palestine as an act of war, and by painting the Yishuv’s mobilized society as one built on discipline, obedience and zealousness, Merchavia’s visions of the pioneer were in line with the thinking of many Italian Fascist ideologues. “The whole country,” he wrote in the first issue of Betar’s journal, “is Tel Hai: every day in the land is…a day of war.” 78 According to Merchavia, when members were instructed to greet one another with “Tel Hai,” they were declaring “I am ready” for the sacrifices that war demanded from its soldiers.79 The second major task of Betar ideologues was to prove that Trumpeldor’s apparent call for a militarized Jewish society had included a rejection of all things socialist. In order to make Trumpeldor an adversary of the Left, Betar leaders not only had to expunge Trumpeldor’s socialist identity from the historical record, but also prove that had he lived, he would have been a stark opponent of . Betar leaders adopted several strategies to transform Trumpeldor’s politics. First, they produced biographical accounts of his life that erased any mention of his commitment to socialism. The closest Propes’ biography came to describing Trumpeldor’s leftist leanings was that he had briefly flirted with “Tolstoyan ideas” in his youth; similarly, a Warsaw-based Betar journal avoided the term “socialism,” and wrote instead of Trumpeldor’s desire to create a movement with a “progressive social character.”80 The article then continued, as nearly all accounts of Trumpeldor’s life did, by adding that postwar socialists had betrayed him by abandoning his most important demand: the creation of a Jewish army. Betar leaders insisted that the demands and beliefs of the Zionist Left in the late 1920s would have repulsed Trumpeldor. They repeatedly stressed that Trumpeldor was a man

77 Ibid., p.13. 78 H. Merchavia, “Mitoch sihot” Tel Chaj, 1 December 1929, p.13. 79 Ibid., p.13. 80 Aharon Propes, Dos Leben fun yosef trumpeldor, p.2; “Betar un di bavegung eretz-yisrael ha’ovedet” Tel Hai 7,9 (August 1930), p.9.

109 of few words who only saw value in deeds; as such, he was a natural enemy of socialists who indulged in endless debates.81 Jabotinsky also sought to make it appear as if Trumpeldor opposed socialist beliefs. To do so, he returned once again to his rendition of Trumpeldor describing the purpose of He-Halutz. After denouncing socialism in his keynote address at Betar’s first world conference in the winter of 1929, Jabotinsky immediately invoked Trumpeldor’s purported call for the “iron” pioneer to serve exclusively Zionist goals.82 By doing so, Jabotinsky had Trumpeldor posthumously endorse his claim that serving socialist ideals was beyond the pale of acceptable Zionist activity. Local Betar magazines obliterated the distinction between Jabotinsky’s words and those of Trumpeldor. An article in a Lwów Betar journal from 1931, entitled “The Pioneer in Trumpeldor’s Thought,” typified this approach when it explained that “[t]he pioneer fights neither for himself nor for one social class, but rather for the good of the nation. You cannot serve two Gods at the same time. Trumpeldor was the first to bring this ideal of the pioneer to fruition.”83 While the first sentence vaguely resembled comments Trumpeldor had made regarding the pioneer’s duties—the term “social class” was not part of Trumpeldor’s formulation—the second sentence was drawn exclusively from Jabotinsky’s writings on the sacrilegious mixing of socialism and Zionism. 84 Just as Betar leaders sought to transform Trumpeldor’s biography into a script for how to live in a militarized society that waged war against socialists, they were equally concerned with teaching young Jews how to fight and die for their nation. Although, as Hen Melekh Merchavia explained, Zionist youth were commanded to perform acts of “daily halutziut [pioneering],” their most important mission was to prepare to die for the nation, which was the moment of “ultimate halutziut.” 85 Merchavia wrote elsewhere that young Jews in Palestine were fulfilling Trumpeldor’s vision of the

81 See, for example, “11 Adar 1920—11 Adar 1930” Tel Chaj 2, 4 (7 March 1930), p.1 and “Achim ve- achayot!” Ibid., p. 3. 82 “Jabotinsky’s groyse rede vegn di oyfgabn fun der idisher yugend” Haynt 2 January 1929. 83 “Chaluc w pojęciu Trumpeldora” Jardenu 1931, no pagination, JI/B33/6/6. 84 “Ve-shatnez lo ya’aleh aleha” Haynt 18 January 1929. The chapter returns to this theme in several pages during its discussion of the place of in Betar’s program. 85 H. Merchavia, Likrat Hamedina (Le-she’elot he-halutziyut ve-habinyan) (Białystok: Drukarnia M. Prużańskiego, 1930) pp.4-5.

110 pioneer “not just in work but also in offering blood, real blood.”86 Like Merchavia, other Betar leaders frequently used Trumpeldor’s death as the framing device for their glorifications of blood, battle and sacrifice. Betar leaders were on far sturdier ground when it came to deploying Trumpeldor as a model for how to die. They could pair Trumpeldor’s wartime diary, which at one point asked “is it not a joy to sacrifice your life for the nation and for the Land of Israel?” with his alleged final words “it is good to die for your country.”87 Nor did much ideological labor have to be performed to make Trumpeldor a model for self-defense against Arab attacks. In order to integrate Trumpeldor’s death into a fully developed militarist worldview, however, Betar leaders had to associate their hero with several ideas about human nature and military conflict that he had never publicly articulated. Jabotinsky did just that in a foreword to Propes’ biography of Trumpeldor. Written on the anniversary of Trumpeldor’s death, the essay would become one of the most widely published articles of the Betar youth movement.88 Early on in his essay, Jabotinsky used Trumpeldor to present his readers with a Hobbesian vision of human interaction based on a natural state of war. According to Jabotinsky, Trumpeldor was the first Jew to clearly see what Jews had denied for centuries; that human nature and social interactions were the products of “appetite and ability.”89 Driven by an insatiable hunger for land and goods, humans constantly sought to exploit those who could not or refused to defend themselves. The only way to prevent one nation from murdering, plundering and persecuting another was for the community under attack to respond in kind. Presenting Trumpeldor as both soldier and social scientist, Jabotinsky described how his friend closely followed the “experiment” of the Diaspora, “precisely and smoothly carried out according to the best scientific criteria, in all eras and all climates” to reach “the conclusion—you have to strike a blow

86 Hen Melekh Merchavia, “Me’az ve’ad hena” Tel Chaj 2,4 (7 March 1930), p. 5. 87 Not surprisingly, the selection of passages from Trumpeldor’s writing involved some censorship as well. Revisionists quoted a 1906 letter, in which Trumpeldor pledged to “defend by force and by sword” his “fields” and “rights”, and added that he would “be happy, knowing what I die for.” Revisionists omitted the qualification that followed: “But it is virtually certain that we will not fight or die. There’ll be no need for that. There will be a need for labor, and we shall work.” See Joseph Trumpeldor to Samosha, 17 June 1906 in Me-hayei Yosef Trumpeldor: Kovetz reshimot ve-kit’ei mikhtavim (Tel Aviv: 1953), p. 33. 88 “Trumpeldor’s yortsayt” in Propes, Dos lebn fun yosef trumpeldor (Warsaw: 1930), pp. i-vi. 89 Ibid., p. iv.

111 [m’shlogt].”90 “That’s why,” Jabotinsky continued, “youth love Trumpeldor. Because, in the entire world, there doesn’t remain one corner that still believes in nonviolence.”91 Jabotinsky’s claim about world politics was not without some truth; the notion that human beings, if left to their own devices, would constantly wage war upon one another, was a staple of the European radical Right and served as a frequent justification for militarism.92 The message was clear: militarism was not one choice among many, but rather the only option available for all. With Trumpeldor as the Jewish interlocutor for Jabotinsky’s worldview, the message was equally obvious: only military retaliation could serve as an effective deterrent force against the persecution of Jews, who would have to hit, fight, and even kill in order to survive. Echoes of Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” essay can clearly be heard in this rendition of Trumpeldor’s approach to militarism. The 1923 article had similarly argued that the necessity of Jewish militarism was based on objective conditions obvious to anyone willing to use their faculties of reason. In other ways, however, Jabotinsky’s description of Trumpeldor marked a significant departure from his previous writing on militarism. Unlike the vague allusions to armed conflict found in “The Iron Wall,” Jabotinsky’s commemoration of Trumpeldor offered a vivid depiction and assessment of the value of military confrontation with Arabs. In Jabotinsky’s retelling of Trumpeldor’s life, killing one’s enemy was not simply a necessity, but an act of great national worth. “Trumpeldor’s value,” Jabotinsky explained, “lies not in the fact that Arabs killed him, but that he defended a Jewish settlement and managed to kill a number of the murderers before they killed him. This, and only this, is the meaning of the Tel-Hai cult among the masses and among the youth.”93 By killing Arab assailants, Jabotinsky continued,

90 “Trumpeldor’s yortzayt”, p.iv. 91 Ibid., p.v. 92 Krzystof Kawałec, Narodowa Demokracja Wobec Faszyzmu, 1922-1939 (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1989), pp.69-73. Although Jabotinsky’s allusion to the prevalence of militarism was clearly rooted in the context of interwar Europe, the ideas he articulated through Trumpeldor had a genealogy that extended centuries beforehand. In Jabotinsky’s words one can hear echoes of Machiavelli and Hobbes, both of whom believed that human beings would constantly prey upon those who refused to arm themselves and demostrate their force. See Carl Cohen, Communism, Fascism and Democracy: The Theoretical Foundations 3rd Ed. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 1997), pp.219-225, 230-232. 93 “Trumpeldor’s yortzayt”, p.iii.

112 Trumpeldor fulfilled the fantasy of the “simple Jew of the masses” for vengeance.94 Betar leaders in Poland reinforced Jabotinsky’s rendition of national sacrifice. According to Warsaw Betar leader Moshe Lejzerowicz, Trumpeldor was the ideal national martyr because he had asked, “Where is it written that in order to carry out my ideal I have to die; perhaps the opposite is true: in order to carry out my ideal, you have to die.” Dying in defense of the nation was not enough; only the martyr who killed his or her enemy could “carry out national goals…that have use not only for the individual, but for the entire collective.”95 When compared to the Labor Zionist renditions of the Tel Hai myth, Jabotinsky and Lejzerowicz’s readings of Trumpeldor’s death were nothing short of revolutionary. Although Labor Zionists, like Revisionists, used the myth of Tel Hai to celebrate national bravery and sacrifice, their understanding of these terms were dramatically different. For Labor Zionists, Tel Hai proved that national sacrifice was primarily performed by working and defending the land against all odds. Trumpeldor’s death had provided a useful template for Labor Zionist national mythography precisely because he had journeyed to Tel Hai not to conquer and expel but rather to defend an already existing Jewish outpost. The very adjectives Labor Zionists used to describe the Tel Hai defenders, such as obstinate and un-flinching, always placed an emphasis on their work and circumvented any description of military engagement.96 The message of Tel Hai, as one Labor Zionist author later wrote, was “martyrdom by standing fast,” not martyrdom by fighting back.97 The sequence of images strung together to describe Trumpeldor’s death similarly left the moment of confrontation hazy. Arabs would be on the verge of the attack, Trumpeldor would grab a gun—and he would then be on the ground, critically wounded, uttering some variation of the words, “It is good to die for the nation.” Labor Zionists often wrote about Trumpeldor was a man who wielded a plough by day and gun by night. Whether or not he actually fired the gun at Tel Hai, and whether his bullets hit their target, was left to the reader’s imagination. Revisionist renderings of the story

94 Ibid., p.ii. 95 M. Lejzerowicz, “Kidush hashem” 7 March 1930, p.7. 96 Anita Shapira, Land and Power, pp.98-109; Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: The Press, 1995), pp. 84-96, 147- 177. 97 Mordechai , “Mi-yemei tel hai” Niv ha-kevutza (spring 1931), quoted in Shapira, p.106.

113 rejected this narrative of self-sacrifice. They broke the cardinal rule of Labor Zionist mythography in the 1920s: they actually described Trumpeldor killing armed Arabs, and celebrated this act as deed of great national worth, if not a national imperative. It would no longer suffice to defend and die; the value of young Zionists, as Lejzerowicz put it, rested in whether or not they could “freely shed their blood as well as the blood of foreigners.”98 Jabotinsky’s rendition of Trumpeldor in his memorial article redefined Betar’s stance towards military engagement in one other fundamental way. Rather than open the essay with Trumpeldor, Jabotinsky began by describing how Russian liberals on the eve of the First World War had distorted the legacy of Giusseppe Garibaldi. A guerilla commander who fought through much of the nineteenth-century to unify the states of the Italian peninsula, Garibaldi was deeply admired by Jabotinsky. How, Jabotinsky asked, could Russian liberals celebrate the life of “the embodiment of ,” a man who had sought to create a new state through military force and insisted that his fellow Italians “drive out German foreigners”?99 Jabotinsky added that this model for seeking national independence was shared by “Poles, Czechs, the same Italians in Austria, and Zionists.”100 Just as Russian liberals were unworthy of commemorating Garibaldi, so too were socialist Zionists unfit to praise Trumpeldor; “among those who sing his praises can be found the most bitter opponents of all that is connected to sword, rifle and pistol.”101 What is most striking about this passage is the way in which it sits uneasily with the remainder of Jabotinsky’s essay. If Trumpeldor was the emblem of Jewish self- defense, as the remainder of the essay claimed, why associate him with irredentist nationalists who initiated military conflict in order to expel those who they deemed foreigners from their land? If, as the essay later claimed, an “iron wall” was the only means to ensure the secure construction of the state by non-military means, why open the piece by likening Trumpeldor to a leader who saw military conflict as the key to national liberation? If Garibaldi was like Trumpeldor, was the Zionist hero’s plow—and in turn, the tools of construction used by all Jewish settlers—of marginal importance in Betar’s

98 M. Lejzerowicz, “Kidush hashem” 7 March 1930, p.7. 99 Jabotinsky, “Trumpeldor’s yortzayt”, p. i. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid., p.ii.

114 vision for how to bring about a Jewish state? Was Trumpeldor’s rifle the ultimate instrument of creation? These complexities capture a central feature of Jabotinsky’s political writing. As a journalist, Jabotinsky’s talent rested above all in his ability to strike a brash, provocative and decisive tone while nonetheless riddling his prose with contradictions. This was a skill perfected in his early days of writing in Russia about theater, art, and later, nationalism. His mastery of the feuilleton writer’s craft served him well when he entered the world of politics. As the previous chapter demonstrated, this approach allowed Jabotinsky to use his Rassvyet articles to navigate among the various social and political constituencies he courted. His strategy for crafting his prose mirrored his strategy for crafting Betar’s approach to militarism: the very dynamism of the youth movement and its ability to attract a mass following would rest not in its articulation of a clear stance, but rather in its ability to create youth who would provocatively walk the line between defenders and aggressors, between those who attempted to prevent violent confrontation with Arabs, and those who sought it out. Rather than use Trumpeldor as a means to form a clear Revisionist identity, Jabotinsky presented his readers with a Janus- faced hero, one who offered two models of the movement’s understanding of the relationship between Zionism and violence. One Trumpeldor fit neatly into the program of self-defense articulated in ‘The Iron Wall’; the other, cast as the Jewish Garibaldi, saw armed conflict and revolutionary struggle as the keys to establishing the Jewish state.

Making Fascist Values Jewish?

Just as Betar’s leaders hoped that their reconfiguration of Trumpeldor’s biography would convince Jewish youth that many values venerated by Italian Fascists were quintessentially Zionist, they expected their public performances of Judaism to convince potential recruits along with their parents that these values were also fundamentally Jewish. In certain respects, Betar followed the cues of other Zionist movements. They treated the Bible as both a guidebook to Palestine’s landscape and historical proof that Jews had a right to settle the land; they saw legends of Jewish sovereignty in ancient Palestine as models for realizing the Zionist dream; they described Jewish religious holidays throughout the year as national events tied to Palestine’s soil; and their

115 educational guides assembled quotes from medieval Jewish liturgy and scholarship that spoke of a yearning to return to Zion.102 These efforts not only had a prominent place in the movement’s journals, but in its cultural activities as well. Betar’s first anthem, for example, was a psalm that spoke of the Jewish yearning to return to Zion. But Betar’s leaders were not merely interested in using Jewish traditions to provide precedent and support for a Jewish return to Palestine. They invoked Judaism’s commandments and customs to argue that the adoption of right-wing attitudes and behaviors was a religious imperative. This was especially true when it came to encouraging opposition towards the Jewish Left. In some respects, the Revisionists were at an advantage: while Labor Zionists may have employed religious motifs in their rituals and rhetoric, they never claimed to enforce, let alone uphold traditional Jewish religious practices.103 Indeed, before Jabotinsky’s arrival, Polish Revisionist youth movement leaders were already describing socialism as the “red assimilation,” that is, a political creed that would lead to the abandonment of Judaism.104 Claiming common cause with traditional Jews, Jabotinsky insisted that socialist Zionism threatened to destroy Judaism altogether. At the heart of Judaism, he argued, lay the belief in only one God. Precisely because monism was “the cornerstone of every Jewish belief,”105 Zionists were forbidden to pair their work for a Jewish state with a socialist ethos. “[Believing in] two ideals,” Jabotinsky explained, “is absurd, just as [is belief in] two gods, or two different altars in one Temple.” 106 As further proof that Zionist socialism was against God’s will, he cited the biblical prohibition against wearing a fabric made of both wool and linen, known in biblical Hebrew as shatnez.107 Like his multilayered description of Trumpeldor, replete with internal tensions, Jabotinsky offered two contradictory explanations for why the shatnez rule applied to his conception of

102 See, for example, Anita Shapira, “The Religious Motifs of the Labor Movement” in Shapira, Zionism and Religion (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1994), pp.250-271; David Myers, Reinventing the Jewish Past: European Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Michael Berkowitz, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 103 Shapira, “The Religious Motifs of the Labor Zionist Movement,” p.259. 104 R. Ben-Szem, “Tarshim tochnit ha-avoda, betar, igrot hamifkada ha-rashit” (October 1928), pp. 2-3, R.Ben-Szem, “Yugend tsionizm, hashomer ha-leumi” (1929), pp.1-27. 105 Brit Trumpeldor: Hartsa’ot, vikuhim, hahlatot (Paris: Betar Command, 1931), p.9. 106 Ibid. 107 The prohibitions appear in Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:5, 22:9-11.

116 Zionist monism. In an essay written in Haynt in January 1929—the first in which he used the term shatnez—he explained that the biblical prohibition had been instituted because wool-wearing cattle breeders and linen-wearing farm laborers, described as “eternal enemies,”108 needed a clear way in which to identify one another from afar. Two years later, however, during a speech at a worldwide Betar conference, he offered a far more terse description of the prohibition against shatnez (and socialism): “Wool is good. Linen is good. But both together are bad. Why? It’s a mystery that I can’t explain.” 109 The two explanations offered distinct strategies for thinking about socialism and Zionism that echoed right-wing prescriptions—in Italy and elsewhere—for thinking and believing. The first provided biblical support for Jabotinsky’s insistence that socialists and Zionists would remain eternal, intractable enemies. The parable of two enemies needing to steer clear of one another would not have been lost on his readers. The second explanation would also have sounded deeply familiar. The Bible, Jabotinsky explained, needed no reason or rationale for the shatnez law; a commandment was a commandment. Similarly, the Revisionist movement did not need to offer a reasoned explanation for its opposition to socialism; the notion that nationalism and socialism were eternal enemies was a matter of faith. Although Jabotinsky often insisted that Revisionist policies—including the movement’s opposition to socialism—were grounded in logic, elsewhere he and other Revisionist leaders praised the ability of Betar members to believe and obey Revisionist policies rather than seek out explanations.110 The focus on biblical commandments not only enabled Revisionists to sanctify their opposition to the Left but also helped them to demonstrate to their recruits the value of religious modes of thinking in the political realm—in particular, the value of obeying commandments on faith alone. In their effort to create a seamless connection between religious and political beliefs and behaviors, Betar developed youth movement rituals for local synagogues. Once again, Joseph Trumpeldor was mobilized. Revisionist leaders hoped that memorial services in his name, performed in synagogues across Poland, would successfully blend

108 “Ve-shatnez lo ya’aleh aleha” Haynt 18 January 1929. 109 Ibid. 110 See, for example, Ben-Szem, Betar be-polanya: Igrot ha-mifkada ha-rashit mispar alef: Tarshim tochnit ha-avoda (arbayts-plan) (Warsaw: October 1928); Jabotinsky’s greeting to Poland’s National Betar conference in 1931,Ve’ida artsit shel betar be-polanya 2-4.VIII.1931, p.1, CZA/A127/743.

117 right-wing politics with Judaism. In Jewish communities worldwide, the synagogue served as the center of religious ritual and communal study; traditional Jews believed that it was a temporary substitute for the Temple, which would be rebuilt with the coming of the Messiah. One of the synagogue’s central tasks was to provide a public space to sanctify death. At several points during the morning, afternoon and evening prayer services, male congregants who had lost a spouse, parent, or child recited aloud the kaddish, a special prayer of mourning. During funerals and special services dedicated to remembering the deceased, the synagogue’s leader of prayer would sing “El Maleh Rachamim” [God, full of compassion], a medieval prayer asking God to watch over the soul of the departed. Betar leaders in Poland were not the first to draw upon traditional rituals in order to celebrate Zionist heroes. Throughout the country, Jews sympathetic to Zionism could gather in synagogues for special services in honor of Theodore Herzl and other well- known Zionist leaders.111 One of the most famous eulogies dedicated to Joseph Trumpeldor, penned by a well-known Labor Zionist leader, was entitled “Yizkor,” the Hebrew term for a memorial service.112 Unlike the Labor Zionist culture of remembrance, which drew upon religious rituals but rarely made mention of any divine power, Betar’s memorial culture frequently mentioned God’s agency in the world. The choreography of Betar’s memorial service for Joseph Trumpeldor, described in articles within the movement’s journals, illuminates the ways in which the movement tried to blend political and religious rituals. Towns and cities across the Poland reported the same sequence of events: uniformed Betar members would file into the synagogue in uniform, carrying their local battalion flags; a Rabbi or Betar leader would offer a presentation about Trumpeldor’s life and the value of the Betar movement; and a prayer leader or cantor would sing “El Maleh Rachamim.” 113 This was, in fact, the choreography staged at the

111 The use of synagogues by Zionist political activists extends into the late nineteenth century; early Zionist activists in Russia used the break between afternoon and evening prayers to present their views to those in the synagogue. See Yosef Goldshtayn, Ben tsiyonut medinit le-tsiyonut ma’asit: ha-tenu’ah ha- tsiyonit be-rusiya be-reshita (Jerusalem: Magnes University Press, 1991) pp.53-60. 112 Berl Katznelson, “Yizkor” in Yalkut Ahdut ha-Avoda 1, p.211. Quoted in Shapira, Land and Power, p.102. See also Jonathan Frankel, “The Yizkor Book of 1911” in H. Ben Israel, ed., Religion, Ideology and Nationalism in Europe and America: Essays in Honor of Yehoshua Arieli (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1986), pp.355-84. 113 “Fun unzer bavegung” Tel Chaj 3(5) 1 April 1930 p. 15.

118 Great Synagogue on New Years’ Day in 1929—the event which opened this chapter. This ritual sequence performed two crucial tasks for Betar in their quest to win public approval. First, the ceremony blurred the boundaries between politics and religion, bringing the political iconography, costuming and choreography of Betar into the synagogue, and making it a central part of the ceremony’s religious ritual. Secondly, by integrating “El Maleh Rachamim” into their service, a prayer that asked God to place the soul of the deceased in the Garden of Eden and offer it eternal protection, Betar members provided their audience with a religious approbation of Trumpeldor’s life and death, and in turn, the political program of their movement. One Betar member from Warkowicz, a small village in the borderland province of Wołyn, recounted that their movement’s service at the local house of prayer left such a favorable impression on the town’s inhabitants that they began to describe Trumpeldor as the new “rebbe” of youth.114 Efforts to sanctify right-wing Zionism by blending religious and political rituals extended beyond the synagogue into the clubhouses of the youth movement. Traditional Jewish holidays were marked by clubhouse celebrations in which local Betar leaders presented each holiday’s “national” value to their members. Of all the Jewish holidays that Betar leaders used to sanctify their politics, the winter holiday of Hannukah was given pride of place. The eight-day Jewish holiday, commemorating the activities of a Jewish rebel army in 2 BCE that wrested control of from the Seleucid Empire, provided the best model to sanctify their military ethos. According to Jewish tradition, the revolt erupted as a protest against the Seleucid ruler’s decision to outlaw Judaism. Like other Zionists, who described the Hannukah revolt as a Zionist act avant la lettre, they pointed to this protest as proof that the new Jewish struggle for national liberation in Palestine was, like its predecessor, a struggle for Judaism. The movements disagreed, however, when it came to defining the essence of the Judaism for which the Macabbees had fought. Socialist Zionist youth movements, like other Jewish socialists, dimmed the holiday’s martial themes and instead depicted the as proto-socialists seeking justice and equality.115 Betar’s leaders believed that the Maccabees offered an altogether different model of Jewish behavior, one that recapitulated the same values as their

114 “Ken betar varkovich” JI/P-153/3/9. 115 David Fishman, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005)p. 108.

119 Trumpeldor legends. The holiday became a way in which Betar leaders could consecrate their vision of Arab-Jewish relations and military engagement as deeply Jewish. An educational manual for Betar published in 1932 described the ideal Polish Jewish youth, sitting in Heder,116 longing to follow the example of the Maccabees “and prepare themselves for later, when they will grow up, to sacrifice their blood for the fatherland.”117 Aharon Propes’ articles on the holiday focused less on national sacrifice and far more on how the Maccabees could serve as a model for the type of warriors Betar members should become. Filled with hatred against their enemies, Propes wrote, the Maccabees had no remorse and offered no compromises in their battle to restore Judaism.118 It was Propes’ retelling of the war’s final moments that was perhaps the most innovative and best captured the movement’s increasing tendency to write, as Italian Fascists did, about violence as a redemptive, cleansing experience. According to a Talmudic legend, which became the standard interpretation of the holiday for centuries, the ultimate value of Hannukah rested not in the Maccabees’ victory over the Seleucids, but rather in God’s performance of a miracle. Legend had it that when the Maccabees restored the Jewish Temple, they only had enough oil to light the Temple’s menorah, a ritual candelabrum, for one day; God saw to it that the oil would burn for eight days, giving the Maccabees enough time to replenish their supply of oil and restore the Temple to its former glory. The traditional legend, which did not appear in the original account of the Maccabean revolt, sought to write God into a narrative in which military action, rather than divine intervention, had restored Judaism and Jewish sovereignty.119 In this rendition, Hannukah’s miracle occurred in the sacred space of the Temple, the center for Jewish worship and the reputed dwelling place of God, rather than upon the battlefield. Propes, unsurprisingly, took a different approach. Here is Propes retelling the tale of the menorah’s lighting:

116 A school where Jewish children began their traditional education. A Heder education generally included learning the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and continued with learning to read the Bible and liturgy. 117 A. Goldin, “Yehuda ha-makabi” Avodatenu (December 1932), p.14. 118 Propes, “Hannukah” Tel Chaj 2 (25 December 1929), p.5. 119 The original account is found in the First Book of Maccabees, written in the latter half of 2 BCE.

120 And then the battle ended, when all the nation could freely breathe, and the Temple was cleaned, they LIT THE MENORAH WITH THEIR IRON SPEARS. IRON SPEARS, PURIFIED BY BLOOD [blut gereynikte shpeyzn]; ONLY ONCE THEY HAD EXPELLED THE ENEMY WITH THESE SPEARS, AND BATTLED FOR FREEDOM, COULD THEY 120 LIGHT THE MENORAH IN THE HOLY TEMPLE … By making the lighting of the menorah—and with it, the restoration of the most sacred site for worshipping God— contingent upon the act of banishing their enemies and murdering those who refused to leave, Propes offered the ultimate sanctification of violence. The blood of the enemy, and not oil, was the purifying element that restored the Temple. Like other Zionist accounts of ancient Jewish legends, Propes was sure to end the story by collapsing past and present, placing ancient heroes alongside modern ones, and blending religious, scriptural narrative with modern political myth. To ensure that his readers understood that the Hannukah story was meant to serve as a model for their own behavior, he insisted they light their own menorahs in commemoration of Joseph Trumpeldor, and added, “these lights, lit with iron spears will…show the way to the Jewish state.” 121 * Where does Propes’ retelling of the story of Hannukah, along with the reinventions of Jewish and Zionist lore that we have surveyed thus far, leave us in our quest to understand Betar’s approach to fascism? On the one hand, the stories and rituals performed by the youth movement’s members make clear Betar’s unapologetic, unflinching support for several crucial features of Fascist Italy’s ideological repertoire. First, the movement insisted that only a society mobilized along military lines could bring about nationalist goals. This entailed the renunciation of one’s individual will and a desire to subordinate oneself to the nation’s demands, prescribed by an authoritarian leader. The Halutz ideal, once it had been reconfigured by the movement, made every citizen a soldier and every choice they made an act of war. Like Italian Fascists, Betar leaders saw this ideal not as a vision for an elite, but as a prescription for the masses. The myths and rituals developed in this period presented a vision of Jewish society in which the cult of believing, obeying and fighting was the key to social progress. Furthermore, like Italian Fascists, Betar leaders ensured that their culture made clear the necessity of

120 Propes, “Hannukah” Tel Chaj 2 (25 December 1929), p.5. Emphasis in the original. 121 Ibid.

121 waging war upon socialists, communists, and any other enemies of the emerging nation- state. Between 1929 and 1932—the very same years that the movement was developing rituals to frame their program as Jewish and Zionist—Betar’s leaders drew even closer to Fascist Italy’s ideological world in their depictions of what these “wars” would actually look like. Adding to a culture that already sanctified the violent deaths of young Zionists defending the construction of the Jewish state, Lejzerowicz and Propes, who were among the most important leaders of Betar in Poland, envisioned the murder of Zionism’s enemies as a national imperative and a cathartic experience. In short, Betar’s leaders had good reason to describe themselves as fascist, as many of them did in 1928. That is not to say, however, that Betar in the late 1920s was no more than an Italian Fascist organization in Zionist costuming. A crucial difference separated the two movements: in the period under discussion, neither Betar’s leaders nor the movement’s members actively sought to intimidate, wound or murder their declared enemies, as Italian Fascist supporters had done in the early 1920s.122 Furthermore, “Jewish fascists” was not a self-definition that sat easily with all. This was particularly true for those who also considered themselves to be among the leaders of Betar’s parent organization, the Revisionist movement. As members of a party that elected conference delegates, engaged in a free exchange of ideas, and participated in the democratic elections and proceedings of the Zionist Organization, they felt, on occasion, the need to insist that their youth movement’s authoritarian leanings did not infringe upon their party’s democratic nature.123 Unsurprisingly, Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 forced Betar leaders to argue far more often than not that they shared nothing in common with fascists.124 Yet paradoxically, as they wove their way through a variety of qualifications to frame their program as Jewish, Zionist and, in later years, “purely” democratic, they were performing many of the same steps of intricate ideological choreography as Italian Fascists. Embracing the wide set of images and arguments provided to them by their

122 On the tendency of Italian fascists to depict their acts of violence as “counterviolence,” see Jensen, p. 282. 123 See, for example, “Unzer yugend” Der Emes 17 August 1928 ; “Protokol der 8. Sitzung Mittwoch, den 13. August 1930” JI/G2/7/1/III; Propes, “Brit hatsohar un betar” Tel Chaj 7 (9) August 1930, p.4; Brit trumpeldor: hartsa’ot, vikuhim ve-hahlatot, p.45. 124 These developments will be taken up in chapter 4.

122 leaders, Betar’s members could flirt with fascism while dodging, if they so desired, the term itself. Evidence from journals produced by Betar clubs in Tarczyn, Wołożyn and Wilno suggests that many of Betar’s members picked up on the range of rhetorical strategies surveyed in this chapter. Much like the official publications from the movement’s Warsaw office, local Betar journals employed a range of approaches when describing authoritarian and militarist ideas. Certain values required no caveats: the glorification of military life, self-defense and “ultimate sacrifice,” for example, abounded in local journals.125 Echoing the discursive strategies displayed by Jabotinsky in his letters of 1929, articles began to link the “Arab threat” with the Jewish Left and urged members to prepare for a ruthless, imminent and inevitable war against both opponents. In the communal diary of a Betar branch in Wilno, for example, one member warned his fellow members in May 1930 that they needed to “fight and annihilate” Labor Zionist workers’ organizations. “We are currently standing,” he wrote, “between two fires, [the fire of] of enemies from within and [the fire of] enemies from without. On one side is the Arab, and on the second side is the pioneer, the Jewish national worker with a red flag in one hand, and in the other hand a spade, or even better, a knife, and is ready…to slaughter us.”126 Furthermore, when they deemed it necessary, Betar members readily employed the elliptical style of their leaders. The reaction of a local Betar branch in the northeastern town of Słonim to Stabiecki’s proposals, introduced at the beginning of this chapter, reveals this approach. After a debate that lasted into the early morning about whether or not to declare themselves Jewish fascists, the branch concluded, “We entirely disagree with Dr. Stabiecki,”—and then immediately added, “and yet, when it comes to building a Jewish state, all means are kosher to achieve that goal.”127

125 See, for example, a local journal from Wołożyn in 1929, which contained several articles that retold the myth of Trumpeldor’s death in order promote these values. Degalenu: Yarhon le-inyanei ha-noar ha-tzioni (1929), JI/B-33/6/7. See also “Unzer ideal” in Le-matara (Tarczin: undated) and “Yidishe kinder” in Unzer Vort (Stock, 1931), in the same file. 126 “Tsum Shand slup” Sefer Hahayim shel havrei brit hashomer ‘hashahar’ be-vilna, 1927-1930, p.100 JI/B33-5/2. 127 “Korespondentsies” Der Emes 5-6 (20 February 1928), p.19.

123 Even the attempt to make fascist values kosher was accompanied by an opposing impulse; to proudly declare that there was something decidedly goyish, or non-Jewish, about their culture. The very ceremony on New Years’ Day, 1929, that served as the opening to Betar’s First World Conference, contained these two impulses. Upon completing the prayer “El Maleh Rahamim,” the cantor was joined by a choir of some thirty boys to sing the Polish national anthem. Following the synagogue service, the Betar members marched out of the synagogue towards Warsaw’s “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” to lay wreaths—a ritual frequently staged by Polish paramilitary youth movements during national holidays. The presence of “Polish” culture appeared elsewhere in Trumpeldor memorial rituals. In a Trumpeldor memorial service in Wilno in 1928, for instance, an orchestra affiliated with Betar played a march by Chopin, lauded by Poles as their nation’s most beloved composer.128 The soundscape of Polishness and the trips to Polish nationalist monuments were but two iterations of Polish culture that played a central role in the movement’s public rituals. It is to these rituals that the coming chapter will turn, in an effort to understand Betar’s relationship to Polish culture and Polish nationalism.

128 “Chronik” in Brit Trumpeldor, mutsa al yedei Brit Trumpeldor be-vilna 10 March 1928, pp.31-32.

124

CHAPTER THREE POLAND, PALESTINE AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING

On a Sunday afternoon in late August, 1932, six hundred Betar members from the province of Lublin gathered in the town of Hrubieszów to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the Jewish Legion. Before the ceremony began at a local high school, Betar leaders approached a Polish representative from the town’s administration. He was handed scissors and asked to cut a ribbon stretching across the stage. The ribbons were blue and white—the colors of the Zionist flag.1 He was then followed by Józef Chrust, a member of Betar’s head command in Warsaw; speaking in Hebrew, he urged his audience to “follow the example of Polish youth” and conduct military training in preparation for liberating Palestine.2 The next day, one hundred and fifty miles west, one thousand Betar members from the province of Kielce marched up the city of Radom’s Piłsudski street with Polish and Zionist flags in hand. When they reached the edge of the street, they crowded around the city’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There, several Betar leaders at the head of the parade laid a wreath on the tomb, performing a ritual that local units of the Polish army and Polish scouts staged throughout the year during Polish patriotic celebrations.3 When six hundred Betar members reenacted the same ritual nearly three hundred miles northeast, in Baranowicze, they reported that they were accompanied by General Paszkowski, a local Polish military official.4 Not to be outdone by this Betar branch, Betar leaders in Luck, two hundred and twenty five miles south of Baranowicze, reported several weeks later that numerous high-ranking members of the Polish army had attended their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier ceremony.5

1 “Di legion fayerungen in poyln” Der nayer veg 9, 18 September 1932, p.15. Blue and white had been used by Zionists for their flags as early as 1891. 2 “Miesięczne Sprawozdanie Sytuacyjne Nr. 8/32r. Lublin, dnia 5 września 1932 r.” AAN/MSW/1380/Mf1749/14, p.197. 3 “Kinus fun Betar fun kieltser galil in Radom” Der nayer veg August 1932, p.18. 4 “Ongehoybn zikh di yuvl-fayerungen fun yidishn legion” Der Nayer Veg August 1932, p.15. 5 “Di legion-fayerungen in poyln” Der nayer veg 9, 18 September 1932, p.15.

125 While the Jewish Legion celebrations staged by Betar’s leaders across Poland in the summer of 1932 were unprecedented in their scope, they drew from a series of rituals frequently staged within the youth movement. Descriptions of the anniversary celebration’s rituals, however, appear to be anything but typical when read in tandem with most scholarly accounts of interactions between Poles and Jews in interwar Poland. By and large, historians of Poland have sought to analyze the social, political and economic relations between Poles and Jews between the two world wars by focusing on antisemitic ideology, anti-Jewish violence and the responses of Polish Jews to these phenomena.6 While this scholarship correctly underscores the crucial role that antisemitism played in Jewish life in interwar Poland, its focus on moments of crisis often leaves the impression that Poles and Jews lived in entirely separate spheres whose boundaries were breached only in moments of conflict. The very term ‘Polish-Jewish relations,’ used by these scholars to describe the focus of their work, presumes that ‘Polish’ and ‘Jewish’ were fixed and static terms that clearly separated one group’s ethnic, religious and political sense of self and community from the other. Betar’s ceremonies call into question these accounts of life in Poland. At the very moment that Betar’s leaders claimed to perform a distinct national identity, they modeled their ceremonies on Polish patriotic rituals, called for their members to “act Polish” and attempted to include Polish government officials as both observers and participants in their celebrations. Furthermore, Betar’s leaders frequently remarked that much of the success of their movement lay in its ability to provide opportunities for young Jews to

6 There is a vast array of scholarship on antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence in Poland. Among the most recent studies that exemplify the approach described above include Joanna Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), Theodore Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism: The “Jewish Question” in Poland, 1850-1914 (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), and the essays in Robert Blobaum, ed., Antisemitism and its Opponents in Modern Poland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005). The best known work on the response of Jews living in interwar Poland to antisemitism is Emanuel Melzer, No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry, 1935-1939 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997). Over the past decade, scholarship on antisemitism in Poland has also been the subject of intense public debate. See Anthony Polonsky and Joanna Michlic, eds., The Neighbors Respond: the Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) and Mariusz Gądek, ed., Wokół Strachu: dyskusja o książce Jana T. Grossa (Kraków: Znak, 2008). For studies that have sought to capture the dynamic nature of these interactions and of Polish-Jewish identity, see Sean Martin, Jewish Life in Cracow1918-1939 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2004), Katrin Steffen, Jüdische Polonität: Ethnizität und Nation im Spiegel der polnischsprachigen jüdischen Presse, 1918-1939 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), Anna Landau-Czajka, Syn będzie Lech…Asymilacja Żydów w Polsce międzywojennej (Warszawa: Neriton, 2006).

126 perform the behaviors associated with “Polskość,” or “Polishness.” No less significant was the reaction of the Polish government to these performances. Government officials often encouraged Betar members to participate in Polish patriotic parades, and even gave them access to their local paramilitary training programs. At various points, the youth movement’s participants, leaders and Polish government officials all shared the same conviction—not only was there something fundamentally “Polish” about Revisionist Zionism, but to be a young Zionist was, in many ways, to exhibit the qualities of the ideal Pole. That is not to say, however, that Betar leaders, members and Polish government officials shared common worldviews or interests. Conversely, there was little consensus as to what “acting Polish” as a Zionist actually meant. Rather, Betar’s members, leaders and Polish government officials each cultivated their own notions of what constituted the ideal Pole and the extent to which Jews could adopt the qualities associated with “Polskość.” In certain respects, this lack of consensus was as old as Polish nationalism itself; from the early nineteenth century, Polish philosophers, literary figures and politicians had wrestled with whether or not “Polishness” would be a civic identity that could be adopted by non-Catholics, or an identity that only ethnic Poles of the Catholic faith could possess.7 The interwar debates, however, were not simply a rehearsal of ideas and arguments that had first been articulated a century beforehand. Throughout the 1930s, Poland’s Jewish and Polish citizens were constantly changing their notions of Polish and Jewish national identity in order to serve what they perceived to be their immediate social and political needs. At times, the perceptions and goals expressed by Betar’s members, leaders and government officials converged. Often, however, they struggled with one another to determine the possibilities and limitations of Jews performing ‘Polishness.’ This chapter explores how Betar’s members, leaders and Polish government officials imagined the power of Polskość to shape the political identities of young Zionist Jews as well as interactions between Polish Jews and Catholic Poles. Drawing from autobiographies written by Betar members, the chapter begins by examining what it was

7 For a concise overview of these debates, see Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

127 about Betar’s use of Polish culture that was compelling to so many Jewish youth. The section provides a snapshot of how the experience of acculturation among Jews coming of age in interwar Poland influenced their political beliefs and practices. The chapter then turns to handbooks, articles, and speeches produced by the youth movement’s leadership in order to explore the various ways in which they constructed models of the ‘ideal Pole’ and Polish patriotic culture for their members to emulate. As we shall see, Betar leaders insisted that the best way for their members to articulate their patriotism for Poland was to enthusiastically support Revisionist Zionism. The ceremonies these leaders designed also aimed to show Betar members that the very performance of Zionist national distinctiveness, including the call for Jews to emigrate to Palestine, could paradoxically serve as a way in which to encourage Catholic Poles to view them as equal citizens of the Polish state. This chapter also analyzes reports written about Betar by government officials across the country, from the organization’s performances of Polishness to its participation in Polish paramilitary training programs. In assessing their expectations of Betar as well as their anxieties about offering support to the group, the section draws attention to the ways in which the Polish government struggled to determine the extent to which young Jews and national minorities at large could be integrated into the Polish state. The section concludes by investigating instances in which Betar’s leaders expressed ambivalence about the connections they were forging with the Polish government. Rather than attempt to deduce a fixed pattern of ‘Polish-Jewish relations’ from Betar’s use of Polish patriotic culture and its interactions with Polish government officials, this chapter instead highlights how Polish Jews and Catholic Poles constantly negotiated the social and political boundaries that defined both these relationships and their own sense of personal and communal identity.

Dictation Lessons and Their Discontents: Betar Members Encounter Polish Patriotism

In 1929, a six-year-old boy from Radom entered the first-grade class of his local public school. His teacher instructed the students to transcribe a passage in Polish. Just as he had done in Heder, the young boy began to write down the sounds he heard using Hebrew letters, starting from the right side of the page and moving leftwards. When the

128 teacher noticed the young boy’s error, she turned to him and said, “Write from left to right, in Polish, not in Yiddish.” Confused, the new student rose from his seat and asked, “Excuse me, miss, but are we Poles or are we Jews?” 8 Recounted ten years later by the boy, now a sixteen-year old gymnasium student who had joined Betar, this anecdote succinctly captures the power of interwar Polish public schools to transform the ways in which young Jews saw themselves. Simply learning how to write in Polish was enough to unsettle his previously held notions about who was Polish and who was Jewish. Embedded within his response to his teacher was yet another question: What made a Pole and what made a Jew? Could, for instance, the act of learning how to read, write and speak in the Polish language have the power to make him Polish? These were questions that would have been deeply familiar to most young Polish Jews in the interwar period. Nearly eighty percent of the four hundred and twenty thousand Jewish children of school age living in 1930s Poland attended a Polish public school.9 In the province of Lwów—a stronghold for Betar—the number was as high as ninety-seven percent. In this province and elsewhere throughout the country, young Jews spent as many as twelve hours a week learning Polish, reading Polish literature, and listening to teachers recount the history of Polish kings, noblemen, soldiers and politicians.10 To obtain a free education, learn alongside non-Jewish students and receive daily instruction in Polish language, literature and history was an experience that distinguished the vast majority of Jewish children from their parents. The Polish public

8 This anecdote appears in one of hundreds of autobiographies written by Polish Jewish youth in 1932, 1934 and 1939 as part of a contest run by Wilno’s YIVO institute for Jewish research. At the time of the contest, its organizers encouraged the autobiographers to use pseudonyms. Nearly 80 years later, YIVO still asks its researchers not to publish the real names of the contestants. See “L.J.”, YIVO RG4/3841, pp.148591-148592. 9 To assess the impact of the interwar Polish public school system on Poland’s Jews, historians generally cite data provided by a government statistics bureau for the school year of 1934-35. See “Uczniowe Żydzi w szkołach powszechnych” Biuletyn Ekonomiczno-Statystyczny (September 1937); Samuel Chmielewski, “Stan szkolnictwa wśród Żydów w Polsce” Sprawy Narodowoście 11 (1937), p.44, table 8. 10 Atlas Historii Żydów (Warszawa: Demart, 2010), p.297. For a discussion of the school system and acculturation, see Gershon Bacon, “National Revival, Ongoing Acculturation: in Interwar Poland” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook vol. 1,1 (2002), pp. 71-92 and Samuel Kassow, “Communal and Social Change in the Polish Shtetl: 1900-1939” in Ronald Dotterer, et al., Jewish Settlement and Community in the Modern Western World (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1991), pp.39-55; Sean Martin, Jewish Life in Cracow, 1918-1939 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2004), pp. 121-149; Ido Bassok and Avraham Novenshtern, “Ma’arakoht ha-hinukh li-yehudei polin ben shete milhamot ha-olam” in Ido Bassok, ed., Alilot ne’urim: Otobiyografiot shel bene no’ar yehudim mi-polin ben shete milhamot ha-olam (Tel Aviv: Institute for the History of Polish Jewry, 2011), pp.736-751.

129 school system not only played a crucial role in determining the linguistic preferences of Polish Jewish youth, who increasingly used Polish as their primary language of communication. The years spent learning about Polish history and literature also shaped the ways in which Jewish youth understood who they were and where they belonged in the new Polish state. Like the young man from Radom, other Betar autobiographers sought answers within the Polish public schools they attended to the question of whether or not they could be both Polish and Jewish. And like him, the answers they received were nearly always ambivalent and often troubling. Their attempts to wrestle with this question at school would come to play a significant role in shaping both their perceptions of Betar and their experiences within the youth movement. On the one hand, Polish public schools under the Sanacja regime seemed to offer young Jews the promise of acceptance and integration into the Polish state. Polish government officials instructed teachers to encourage Jewish, Ukrainian, Belorusian and Lithuanian students to embrace Polish literature and history as their own.11 They also insisted that schools stage as many patriotic celebrations as possible, from parades on Polish Independence Day to school recitals in honor of the name-days (dzień imienin) of prominent Polish cultural and political figures.12 By doing so, they hoped that the country’s national minorities, in particular, those living in the eastern Polish borderlands, would identify with Poland’s political leadership and become loyal citizens of the country. These expectations were made clear in the new curricula designed by Piłsudski‘s government in the early 1930s. The Sanacja’s curriculum guidelines for the study of history explained that its “emphasis on moments of active and positive participation of the minorities in Poland’s state life” aimed at “strengthening in them a sense of

11 Stefania Walasek, Szkolnictwo powszechne na ziemiach północno-wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej, 1915- 1939 (Kraków: Oficyna Wydawnicza Impuls, 2006), p.170. For general histories of the interwar Polish public school system, see Klemens Trzebiatowski, Szkolnictwo powszechne w Polsce w latach 1918-1932 (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1970); Wanda Garbowska, Szkolnictwo powszechne w Polsce w latach 1932-1939 (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1976); Stephanie Zloch, Polnischer Nationalismus: Politik und Gesellschaft zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2010), pp.209-252. On minorities in these schools, see Stanisław Mauersberg, Szkolnictwo powszechne dla mniejszości narodowych w Polsce w latach 1918-1939 (Warszawa: Ossolineum, 1968). 12 Edmund Juśko, Szkolnictwo powszechne w powiecie tarnowskim w latach 1918-1939 (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2008), pp.217-225; Dorota Wojtas, Learning to Become Polish: Education, National Identity and Citizenship in Interwar Poland, 1918-1939 (Leipzig: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009), pp.284-322.

130 attachment and civic responsibility with regard to the state.”13 A 1935 history curriculum instructed fifth-grade teachers, should they find themselves “in schools where there are Jewish youth,” to “address more fully the participation of Jews in the struggles for independence.”14 Echoing this advice, textbooks describing national minorities in Poland’s history often focused on their participation in Polish armed revolts.15 Descriptions of Jews participating in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Polish rebellions aimed to demonstrate that Polish patriotism had a tradition of inclusion and tolerance of non-Catholics. They also presented military service as the most effective route for Jewish membership in the Polish nation. A second-grade reader published in 1933, for example, described Polish soldiers coming to a village: “There are also Ukrainians, who immediately began to sing their wonderful songs. There are still others, Byelorussians, who speak a musical language, and there are Jews. And all of them are Polish soldiers— good, beloved soldiers of one good, beloved Fatherland.”16 Indeed, much of the attention that government officials devoted to public schooling stemmed from their conviction that students could serve as future soldiers who would defend the state’s fragile borders from attack, as well as support the spread of Polish language and culture in the region.17 Throughout the academic year, schools sent student delegations to participate in patriotic parades alongside locally stationed soldiers. The government’s Ministry of Military Affairs [Ministerstwo Spraw Wojskowych] was in frequent contact with the Ministry of Religious Confessions and Public Enlightenment [Ministerstwo Wyznań Religyjnych i Oświecenia Publicznego] to discuss how to prepare these students for military service.18 By the late 1920s, the Polish Army was encouraging schools to set up scouting units that would follow the command of local “military preparation” [przysposobienie wojskowe] committees. The Sanacja government’s

13 MWRiOP, Program nauki w publicznych szkołach powszechnych drugiego stopnia z polskim językiem nauczania, Historja (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Książek Szkolnych, 1935), p.16, quoted in Carla Esden-Tempska, National and Civic Education in Polish Elementary School Textbooks in the Interwar Period (Ph.D. diss, Indiana University, 1991) p.299. 14 MWRiOP, Program drugiego stopnia, Historja, p.6, quoted in Esden-Tempska, p.303. 15 Esden-Tempska, p. 278. 16 Antoni Jan Mikulski and Juljusz Saloni, W Lipkach: Czytanki dla II klasy szkół powszechnych, 2nd ed (Lwów: Ossolineum,1933), p.136. Quoted in Esden-Tempska, p.301. 17 Janusz Odziemkowski, Armia i społeczeństwo II Rzeczypospolitej (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 1996), pp. 87-98. 18 Ibid.

131 preoccupation with creating citizen-soldiers also left a deep imprint on the public school’s literature program. Novels by such Polish Romantic authors as Adam Mickiewicz and Henryk Sienkiewicz, describing seventeenth and eighteenth-century battles against Swedes, Cossacks and Russians, became staples of the public school classroom. Considered by Polish nationalists of every stripe to be the father of modern Polish literature, Mickiewicz wrote sweeping romantic tales of Polish military exploits and stories of Polish national rebirth in which Jews were a natural, integral component of Polish life. Along with his patriotic poems and plays, Mickiewicz had also claimed elsewhere that Jews and Poles shared a mystical bond. Advocates of Jewish integration into Polish society had used these writings for decades as proof that Catholic Poles and Jews were brothers in arms, two oppressed nations each fighting for independence.19 Mickiewicz’s literature, when read within the context of the public school, reinforced the message of school authorities that any national minority group who pledged loyalty to Poland and joined in its military struggles would be embraced as part of the Polish nation. It is difficult to precisely measure the impact of these curricula on the beliefs and experiences of Jewish students in interwar Poland. Most Jews who were socialized in the Polish public school system were also victims of the Holocaust, and never lived to recount their experiences. The evidence that does exist, however, suggests that Polish public schooling had a significant impact on their self-image. Retrospective accounts of Jewish childhood in Poland written by Holocaust survivors or those who emigrated from Poland prior to 1939 often describe how experiences in the Polish public school system decisively shaped the ways that Jewish youth encountered the Polish state and Polish culture. Remembering his childhood in the Galician town of Kolbuszowa, for instance, Norman Salsitz recalled how his school’s “nationalistic component was unmistakable, the emphasis always on Poland, its glorious army, its marvelous government,”20 and added, “as much as I disliked Heder, I found myself enjoying public school.” 21 Other memoirists describe in greater detail the patriotic rituals of Polish schools, from group

19 Katrin Steffen, Jüdische Polonität: Ethnizität und Nation im Spiegel der polnischsprachigen jüdischen Presse, 1918-1939 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), pp.125-142. 20 Norman Salsitz, A Jewish Boyhood in Poland: Remembering Kolbuszowa (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006), p.56. 21 Ibid., p.57.

132 excursions to nationally-significant sites to lessons where students were forced to memorize passages of Polish poetry.22 Describing his experience of reading Henryk Sienkiewicz, historian Theodore Hamerow reflected, “this nationalistic children’s literature produced the desired result; it made me an ardent Polish patriot. I came to feel that the enemies of Poland were my enemies, that its heroes were my heroes.”23 Recollections about the influence of Polish literature were more pronounced in autobiographies produced by Jewish youth in the 1930s as part of the “Youth Autobiography” contests held by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in 1932, 1934 and 1939. The autobiographies make clear that encounters with Polish literature at school cut across the divisions of region, religion, class and gender that marked so many other aspects of Polish-Jewish life. “I especially loved Polish literature,” recalled “Esther,” a girl whose father, a Gerer Hasid, had reluctantly sent her to their town’s Polish public school; “I idolized the Polish Romantic poets Mickiewicz and Slowacki. Polish history was also a subject I loved and learned easily. I was enthralled by everything connected with Polish history. I was consumed with the great martyrdom of Polish heroes in their struggle for Poland’s independence. I venerated Marshal Józef Piłsudski.”24 A fifteen- year-old student from Lublin similarly recalled in her 1934 autobiography, “I loved my native town, Poland’s landscape, towns and cities, its kings and heroes, I loved all that was Polish. This love grew during my six years in public school when I came under the influence of a patriotic woman teacher….”25 The Betar autobiographers similarly described the efforts of public school teachers to instill Polish patriotism in their students. “K.S.V.”, a young man from a town near Łódź, recounted how his Polish teacher “hammered Sienkiewicz’s trilogy into us until we almost broke.”26 Although he resented having to learn Sienkiewicz’s account of

22 See, for example, Mayer Kirshenblatt, They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), pp.278-279; “Eter” in Jeffrey Shandler et al, eds., Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland Before the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), p.381. 23 Theodore Hamerow, Remembering a Vanished World: A Jewish Childhood in Interwar Poland (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), p.107. 24 “Esther” in Jeffrey Shandler et al, eds., Awakening Lives, p. 326. 25 “G.T.” YIVO/RG4/3716, quoted in Celia Heller, On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland between the two World Wars (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1977), p.226. 26 “K.S.V.” YIVO/RG4/3644, p.21.

133 seventeenth-century Polish military adventures by heart—a task faced by most public school students—he nonetheless pointed out to his readers that Polish history was his best subject. Indeed, when it came to describing their education, Betar autobiographers, along with other YIVO autobiographers, most frequently listed Polish literature and history as their favorite subjects.27 Many frequently contrasted the intellectual stimulation they felt when reading the texts they encountered at school with their boredom when studying traditional Jewish texts at Heder. 28 Significantly, however, none of the Betar autobiographers described their experiences in the public school classroom as a threat to their observance of Jewish customs. “R.E.,” a young Betar member from the southeastern town of Horodenko, for example, could write with as much passion about his Polish language teacher introducing him to Polish literature and watching Polish soldiers march during parades as he could about praying with his father and wearing tzitzit.29 For lack of a contemporary role model, he may well have recalled Mickiewicz’s most famous work, Pan Tadeusz, which included among its protagonists an observant Jewish innkeeper in the early nineteenth century who was also a fervent Polish patriot. As numerous memoirs and autobiographies from the period suggest, Polish public school teachers were largely successful in their attempt to train Jewish students to see Polish literary texts as a wellspring which they could easily, swiftly and intuitively draw upon to help formulate their own self-image as citizens of the Polish state. While literary texts may have provided students with both an inclusive definition of Polskość and an idealized image of Polish-Jewish brotherhood, no amount of dictation lessons or literary memorization exercises could change the nature of interactions between Jewish and non-Jewish students. The admiration with which Betar autobiographers recounted the school’s Polish curriculum vanished when they began to describe these interactions. Although “K.S.,” a twenty-year-old from the central Polish

27 See “R.E.” YIVO/RG4/3571; “K.S.” YIVO/RG4/3814, p.11; “Esther” in Jeffrey Shandler, Awakening Lives, p.323. 28 On the importance of Polish literature in fashioning the self-image of Jewish youth in Poland, see Steffen, Jüdische Polonität, pp.125-142, and “Das eigene Durch das Andere: Zur Konstruktion jüdischer Polonität” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnows Institut 3 (2004), p.94; Sean Martin, Jewish Life in Cracow, 1918-1939 (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2004), pp.215-218; On the role of European literature in the self- fashioning of interwar Polish-Jewish youth, see Marcus Moseley, “Life, Literature: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Interwar Poland” Jewish Social Studies 7, 3 (2001), pp. 1-51. 29 “R.E.” YIVO/RG4/3571.

134 town of Kozienice, described his love of learning Polish history at school, he simultaneously recounted that “in school, Christian kids used to attack the Jewish kids, and a full-blown ‘war’ would begin. Many would come home bloodied. The Christian students were also hurt. Such battles happened often.” Even as they sat in the classroom, he added, he could still “feel their hatred.”30 Descriptions abounded in other autobiographies of Jewish students doing their best to avoid harassment from their Christian classmates by sitting on the opposite side of the classroom or avoiding the playground during recess.31 Teachers and administrators were often depicted as indifferent, if not hostile, to Jewish students who objected to this treatment. An eighteen- year-old Betar member from a small town in Wołyn, for example, recounted how he was promptly expelled from school when he chose to speak up against a Polish student who had insulted him.32 The sense of being treated as inferior to non-Jewish students could also manifest itself in more subtle, but no less hurtful ways. One autobiographer from a town in central Poland described how at his graduation, the school’s director kissed students on both sides of the cheek. When a young Jewish student went up to receive his grade, the teacher turned away. “We were old enough,” he recalled, “to understand what such behavior meant.”33 Although the unequal treatment of Jewish students was never enshrined in the policy of Poland’s public schools, the behavior of many non-Jewish students and teachers stemmed from beliefs that were also shared and condoned by many government officials. As recent historical scholarship on the interwar Polish government’s national minorities policies has shown, a vast range of views about minorities existed among Sanacja officials. When it came to assessing the ability of Jews to integrate into the Polish state, there was a large disjuncture between the writings of members of the Sanacja intelligentsia and local and government officials throughout the country. The view that Jews could eventually integrate into the Polish nation was largely the preserve of

30 “K.S.” YIVO/RG4/3814, p.11. 31 See, for example, “Maks Einhorn” YIVO/RG4/3652, p.16; “KSV” YIVO/RG4/3644, p.13; “G.S.” YIVO/RG4/3515, p.51; “L.J.” YIVO/RG4/3841, p. 148593. See also Max Weinreich’s classic study of these autobiographies, Der veg tsu unzer yugnt: Yesoydes, metodn, problemn fun yiddisher yugnt-forshung (Vilne: Y. Kraynes, 1936), pp.186-189, 197-201. 32 “S.H.” YIVO/RG4/3511, p. 7. 33 “KSV” YIVO/RG4/3644, p.22.

135 members of Warsaw’s Sanacja intelligentsia. The number of those who held this view steadily decreased throughout the interwar period. 34 To make matters more complicated, Piłsudski never appointed a decision-making body to serve as the chief authority on the issue of nationalities.35 As a result, government policies towards Jews depended largely on the local context, and practices on the ground frequently ran counter to calls for a multicultural Poland offered by some higher-ranking Sanacja officials.36 Even as some of the Sanacja’s top-tier officials promoted the notion that Jewish youth could become loyal citizens of the Polish state, they rarely claimed, as they did for Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Belorusians, that Jews could become Polish. Many officials believed a Polish education would at best pacify the hostility of Jews towards the Polish state. In official exchanges between local and national officials, representatives of the Polish government claimed that Jews were naturally predisposed to communism and were dangerously overrepresented in key sectors of the Polish economy.37 These officials were also well aware that Catholic church officials would reinforce deep-seated beliefs among their parishioners that Jews intrinsically hated Catholics and posed a threat to the Polish state.38 According to historian Brian Porter, Poland’s Catholic Church was “thoroughly

34 There has been little written on this topic; for these insights, I thank Paul Bryczynski, whose dissertation on ideas about the Polish nation between 1918-1926 is forthcoming. For a case of how one member of the Sanacja’s intelligentsia envisioned Poland as a state that could at once be Polish and multicultural, see Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), pp.60-82 35 Waldemar Paruch, Od konsolidacji państwowej do konsolidacji narodowej: Mniejszości narodowe w myśli politycznej obozu piłsudskiego, 1926-1939 (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie- Skłodowskiej, 1997). 36 Andrzej Żblikowski, “Poles and Jews in the Kresy Wschodnie—Interethnic Relations in the Borderlands, 1918-1939” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnows Institut 1 (2002), pp.41-53; Szymon Rudnicki, “Anti-Jewish Legislation in Interwar Poland” in Robert Blobaum, ed., Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp.148-170. 37 Historian Waldemar Rezmer quotes at length Polish army reports, now stored at the Central Military Archives, that consistently describe Jewish soldiers as communist infiltrators. He reads these sources uncritically, taking them as objective assessments of Jewish attitudes and behaviors in the army. See Rezmer, “Służba wojskowa Żydów w siłach zbrojnych Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej“ in Zbigniew Karpusa and Waldemara Rezmera, eds., Mniejszości Narodowe i wyznaniowe w siłach zbrojonych Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej, 1918-1939 (Toruń: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2001), pp.97-110. On the widespread belief that all Jews were Bolsheviks in disguise, see Joanna Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), pp.88-93. On Polish government perceptions of Jewish economic control, see Kathryn Ward Ciancia, “Poland’s Wild East: Imagined Landscapes and Everyday Life in the Volhynian Borderlands, 1918-1939” (Ph.D. diss, Stanford University, 2011), pp.117-118. 38 On the Catholic Church and antisemitism, see Michlic, pp.82-88, 98-100; Brian Porter-Szűcs, Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity and Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp.295-314.

136 penetrated by paranoia over Jewish conspiracies and stereotypes about Jewish vice” and poured their efforts into convincing their parishioners that Jews were plotting to destroy Christian civilization.39 While antisemitism did not always determine the nature of Polish-Jewish interactions in the interwar period, negative and longstanding beliefs about Jews served as a backdrop for many encounters between Poles and Jews, both personal and professional. Although Piłsudski’s government sought to curb antisemitic attacks, and was far more welcoming to national minorities than the Polish ethno-nationalist Right, it did so primarily out of a desire to maintain order, rather than out of any sympathy for the country’s Jewish population. The government never presumed it could eradicate the hostility that Poland’s non-Jews felt towards Jews, nor did it attempt to do so. They were far more concerned with the eventual of the country than they were with nurturing a multiethnic, multicultural Polish state. Written in 1939, the autobiography of “G.S.” captures the sense of confusion and frustration that many Betar members and Jewish students in general felt when they compared their school’s educational ideals to the antisemitic behavior condoned by school and government authorities. His life in Ostrołęka, a town seventy-five miles northeast of Warsaw on the edge of the Narew river, was typical of a young Jew living in a shtetl. Ostrołęka’s four thousand Jews, who made up nearly half the town’s population, sustained a variety of traditional Jewish institutions typical of small-town life in central Poland, from synagogues and ritual baths to burial and financial aid societies. The son of a blacksmith, G.S. began his autobiography describing the importance of these traditional institutions in the daily life of his family. Like most of his contemporaries, however, his educational trajectory steered him beyond the corridors of these traditional Jewish institutions. Although G.S. began his education at a Heder, he soon transferred to a religious Zionist school whose classes in Polish and Hebrew led many in town to brand it the “heder for heretics.”40 Soon after, he enrolled in the newly-opened Tarbut school, a secular Zionist school.41 It was at Tarbut that G.S. first encountered Polish patriotic culture. Like several other Tarbut schools in interwar Poland, the Ostrołęka branch

39 Brian Porter-Szűcs, p.p.273, 291. 40 “G.S.”, p.4. 41 The very name of the school, “Culture,” made clear that its founders sought a definition of Zionism that was not contingent upon the religious beliefs of its adherents.

137 decided to march in the town’s annual parade to commemorate the anniversary of constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.42 The experience, he later recalled, left a deep impression on him: “standing at attention in a line, just like soldiers…we energetically marched by the parade’s review committee with pride, accompanied by the music of the military orchestra.”43 Finally, like the vast majority of Polish Jewish youth who had similarly begun their education at Heder, he enrolled in his local Polish public school: The atmosphere in which I found myself seemed entirely foreign. A new history, with fresh kings, fresh heroes, wars and nations. Everything made me confused…The [school] director also taught us history and geography. We soon realized who were dealing with— an old Legionist, a Piłsudski supporter [a pilsudchik]. He used to tell us about his deeds in the legion. He instilled in us, with fervent passion, the Polish patriotic spirit. We must love our fatherland and give it the greatest sacrifices….But he also used to tell us that the antisemitic acts being carried out by hooligans…were only carried out by irresponsible elements. I have to say, however, that this particular lesson didn’t really stick to my mind. The hateful stares of the Christians who I encountered everywhere were too clear. The feeling of being hit…was too painful….You could grit your teeth in anger, but you could do nothing…He [the teacher] could only place the theory of loving the fatherland in our heads so long as he didn’t look at the bitterness that lay in our souls….44

G.S.’s account captures the extent to which Jewish students’ admiration for Polish patriotic culture could make their encounters with antisemitism all the more painful. What makes G.S.’s autobiography particularly interesting is the sequence in which he narrated both his educational trajectory and his conflicting sense of belonging and alienation. In the midst of describing his excitement about marching in the Third of May Parade and his experiences at the Polish public school, he noted that he had joined the town’s recently resurrected Betar unit. “It was obvious,” he explained, that there was a “national spirit…dormant within me.”45 At first glance, the sentences describing his participation in Betar sit uncomfortably in an otherwise coherent narrative sequence about his educational experiences. What was it about his first experiences within Betar

42 Both YIVO autobiographies and government reports describe, for example, Tarbut schools participating in the country’s Third of May parades. One autobiography of a former Betar member describes attending an Orthodox Jewish elementary school, where students were learning Polish alongside traditional Jewish texts. On encounters with Polish patriotic culture at Tarbut schools, see YIVO/RG4/3515, p.51, “Miesięczne Sprawozdania Sytuacyjne nr. 8 1933r” AAN/MSW/1181/0/3, p.104. 43 “G.S.”, p. 51. 44 Ibid., pp.68-9. 45 Ibid.p., 68.

138 that led him to include these passages in his descriptions of his encounters with Polish national culture and antisemitism at school? The connection between these passages can be better understood if one situates G.S.’s autobiography among numerous descriptions by other Betar members about the youth movement’s power to shape the perceptions that Poles had of Jews. Significantly, nearly all descriptions of the youth movement’s public parades included detailed accounts of the reactions of non-Jewish, and usually Polish onlookers. A retrospective account of Betar’s founding in the east-central kresy town of Luboml was typical. In the early 1930s, a Betar delegation from the nearby town of Rejowiec had arrived to promote the movement. Local youth watched as Betar members, much like Polish soldiers at patriotic celebrations, marched into town with guns slung over their shoulders and an orchestra leading the way. “It is difficult,” a former Betar member from Luboml recounted, “to capture the strong impression this ‘Jewish army’ gave…. here was a Jewish youth who knew how to defend themselves” and who received “the respect of non-Jews in town.”46 Although this account was produced decades later, it echoed the descriptions of Betar’s parades that appeared in local journals during the 1930s. These accounts insisted that Betar was transforming the perceptions that Poles and others living in Poland had of Jews by adopting the very military rituals that were at the center of Polish public culture. Recounting the journey of twelve hundred Betar members in 1933 from Warsaw’s Leszno street in the Jewish quarter to Plac Piłsudskiego, the city’s main gathering point for Polish national celebrations, a Betar participant described how “many Christians took off their hats as the parade flags passed by.”47 “We have to show the Christians that Jews also know how to march,”48 insisted another Betar member as he described his local branch marching through the village of Stoczek in central Poland. By performing the roles of soldiers, he noted, Jewish youth somehow appeared to be just like Poles. Among the various descriptions of non-Jewish observers in his article, he noted “A peasant with a horse passes by and looks at the line [of marchers]... Had he not heard them speak, he would have never believed that they were Jews.” He added that the

46 Ya’akov Hetman, “Betar be-luboml”, JI/P-153/3/9, p.1. 47 “Impozanter tsug fun der brit yugnt iber di varsh. gasn”, JI/B33/2/1. 48 Y. Oyslerner, “A beytarisher oysflug,” Unzer Vort 1931, p.21 JI/B33/6/7.

139 reactions of the peasant and the other non-Jews they passed by made their “young hearts... overjoyed.”49 Equally significant was the journal article that preceded the young boy’s account of his local unit’s parades in Stoczek. An article entitled “Literature and Youth” offered a detailed guide to the negative perceptions shared by well-known Christian European novelists and poets. The article began, “Who hasn’t seen how other nations represent Jewish youth, who hasn’t seen their pictures—a shriveled little boy... with two sidelocks, trembling with terror at each little blow? This is how the nations think of us…Each nation is accustomed to fight and conquer and in certain cases fight and die. The Jews are only used to dying… ” The article’s young author then turned to the work of the antisemitic philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose Foundations of the Nineteenth Century—which insisted that Jews exerted an oppressive influence over the superior “Nordic Races” of Europe—had become one the most widely read texts among antisemitic movements across the continent. After telling his fellow Betar members that that Chamberlain believed that “Jews are brilliant brokers, brilliant thieves and brilliant martyrs,” he added, “I’m not going to deal with the first two [claims], but Chamberlain is right regarding martyrdom.”50 The conspicuous presence of the approving “Christian gaze” in nearly all of the parade accounts found in Betar journals—and the antisemitic Christian gaze that so clearly loomed in the background—offers a glimpse into the conditions that Betar members thought were necessary to gain the acceptance of their fellow citizens. Their experiences in Polish public schools had already made clear that emulating the idealized Poles of the Polish literary canon would not ensure that their sense of belonging in Poland or their sense of brotherhood with the Polish nation would be shared by their Polish peers. Only if Betar members adopted Poland’s public military culture while simultaneously performing their national distinctiveness as Zionists could they gain the respect of Poles. For many of the youth movement’s members, Betar appeared to be the best way to stage their vision for Polish-Jewish brotherhood without provoking harassment by Poles. Although the socialist Zionist youth movement Haszomer Hacair, with over

49 Ibid., p.22. 50 M. Wodinski, “Literatur un yugnt” Unzer Vort 1931, p.9.

140 twenty thousand members in the early 1930s, had initially borrowed from the material culture of the Polish scouting movement and frequently lifted articles from their publications, by the late 1920s, they were engaged in an active campaign to purge traces of Polish national culture from their movement, and place a new emphasis instead on Marxism and the Hebrew language.51 The movement’s turn to the radical left did not go unnoticed by the Polish government, which came to view the group as a potential threat to the Polish state. If Jewish youth seeking to present themselves as allies of the Polish state would have been hesitant to join Haszomer Hacair, they would have been all the more reluctant to join the General Jewish Labor Bund’s youth movement, Tsukunft, which by 1929 had just over ten thousand members.52 Although they too offered their members a vision for Polish-Jewish brotherhood—in their case, Polish and Jewish workers uniting to fight capitalism—their socialist ethos gave the group the reputation of being hostile towards the Sanacja regime.53 The only major youth movement other than Betar to claim loyalty to the Polish state belonged to the Agudas Yisroel party, whose chief mandate was to protect the interests of Poland’s Orthodox Jews. The group’s leaders, however, explained to their members (also about ten thousand strong in the early 1930s) that they vehemently opposed young Jews adopting any features of Polish culture. Their declarations of loyalty to Poland, they explained, were designed to allow them to continue the Jewish tradition of shtadlanut—interceding in government affairs to protect the interests of Jews.54 In contrast, Betar claimed that their performances of Polish patriotic rituals complemented rather than threatened the practice of Jewish traditions. Betar was, in fact, the only Jewish youth movement in Poland that combined scouting and military training, consistently and actively participated in Polish national celebrations and used the choreography of Polish youth and military groups from Polish public events

51 Ofer Nur, “Hashomer Hatzair Youth Movement 1918-1924 from eastern Galicia and Vienna to Palestine: A Cultural History" (Ph.D diss, University of California Los Angeles, 2004). 52 Jacob Hertz, Di geshichte fun a yugnt: der kleyner bund tsukufnt in poyln (New York: Unzer tsayt, 1946), p.273. 53 Gertrud Pickhan, Gegen den Strom: Der Allgemeine Jüdische Arbeiterbund “Bund” in Polen, 1918- 1939 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001), pp. 318-328. On the relationship of the Bund with the Polish Socialist Party, see Abraham Brumberg, “The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in the late 1930s” in Chone Shmeruk, et at, The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars (Hanover: University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press, 1989), pp.75-97. 54 Gershon Bacon, The Politics of Tradition: The Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916-1939 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1996), pp.225-280.

141 for their own national celebrations. While it is true that many if not most Betar members joined the movement for non-ideological reasons—a brother, sister, friend or potential romantic interest may have been a member, for instance, or the unit may have had the best soccer team in town—the movement’s activities could also provide them with opportunities to perform the explicitly political identities that they had been instructed to adopt in the Polish public school system. By providing Polish Jewish youth with an opportunity to participate in patriotic rituals that were nearly identical to those of their Polish peers, Betar gave its members the chance to act out the values associated with “Polskość” that they had been taught to revere in school. Equally significant was the fact that this performance of Polishness simultaneously insisted on its very uniqueness as a Zionist act. It allowed Betar’s members to send a message to local Poles that even as they admired them, they had no desire to become a member of their national community. By doing so, Betar’s members hoped that they could perform Polskość without the risk of facing verbal and physical harassment from the very people they were emulating.

Inventing Revisionist “Polskość”: Betar’s Leaders Imagine Piłsudski and the Ideal Pole While many of Betar’s members in Poland were preoccupied with the ability of Revisionist parades to capture the attention of Poles, Betar’s leaders saw their parades first and foremost as a means to transform nationally indifferent Jews into passionate Revisionists. At several points in the early years of the Revisionist movement, Jabotinsky wrote articles and delivered speeches that described how the colors of flags, the sounds of an orchestra and the sight of hundreds of uniformed youth marching in sync could hypnotize even the least “national” Jew.55 “Nothing in the world,” he wrote in a popular 1929 article describing military parades, “can make an impression upon us as the ability of the masses, in particular moments, to feel and act as one unit, with one will, working at a steady tempo.”56 Opponents of the Revisionist movement often used Jabotinsky’s insistence that Zionists had much to learn from the public ceremonies staged by Europe’s

55 See, for example, “Wywiad sportowy z Żabotyńskim” Dziennik Warszawski 25 February 1927; Jabotinsky, “Vegn militarizm” Haynt 25 January 1929. 56 Jabotinsky, “Vegn militarizm” Haynt 25 January 1929. The article was later included in Betar’s first ideological anthology, published in 1933. See Zamlbukh far betarisher yugend (Warsaw: 1933), pp.68-71.

142 nationalists to accuse Betar of being quintessentially non-Jewish, or “goyish.” Much like the claims that Betar was fascist, accusations that Betar and its leader were “goyish” were meant to delegitimize the movement in the eyes of the Jewish public. Significantly, however, even as Betar leaders insisted their movement was Jewish, they simultaneously embraced the epithet of being “goyish” as a mark of success. Indeed, the very notion that Jabotinsky did not look, speak or act Jewish became crucial to both his public persona and that of Betar. It was precisely because Jabotinsky was born into the “assimilated” world of Jewish Odessa, Betar leaders argued, that he could intuitively understand the secrets to the national success of Eastern Europe’s successor states better than any other Zionist leader. In a journal dedicated to Jabotinsky on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, for example, Moshe Lejzerowicz began his tribute by proclaiming, “Not ‘Ze’ev’ and not ‘Wolf’ but ‘Vladimir’ Jabotinsky—with this name he came to us from a foreign world.”57 By the early 1930s, Jabotinsky’s purported admonition to followers to pay heed to “our teacher and rabbi, the gentile” had become, along with the “iron wall,” one of his most often-quoted phrases.58 This was a lesson that Betar’s leaders in Poland took to heart. Even as they insisted that their movement embodied Jewish values, they recognized that linking their movement to Polish patriotic culture and adopting many of its traits would draw in young Jewish followers. Some leaders, like Moshe Goldberg, a member of Betar’s Head Command in Warsaw, even argued that adopting Polish nationalist culture would be the key to awakening Zionist support among traditional Jews. Describing traditional, ‘ordinary’ Jews participating in a state funeral of a Polish politician, Goldberg insisted that the event proved that even among “the homely Jewish folk of Nalewki street [the commercial hub of Warsaw’s Jewish quarter]… the cult for heroic deeds and political leaders who sacrifice their life for their nation and land exists.” If, he continued, Revisionists could introduce public rituals into their culture that resembled those of the Polish state and present them to traditional Jews, their Zionism, lying “dormant in their subconscious,” would surely awaken.59 Just as the Revisionist movement had used

57 M. Lejzerowicz, Ha-holem ve-ha-lohem” Tel Chaj October 1930, p.4. 58 “Ha-veida ha-olamit ha-4: protokolim ve-hahlatot” JI/G2/7/1/III. See also Almoni, “Mehanekh ha-am” Tel Chaj vol. 9, October 1930, p.5; “Z.Lerner, “Ni-hiye ke-hol ha-goyim” Ha-Medina 30 March 1934, p.2. 59 Moshe Goldberg, “Józef Piłsudski“ Ha-Medina 28 May 1935.

143 biblical legends and Jewish traditions when constructing Betar’s culture, so too could they use Polish nationalist culture to help traditional Polish Jews view Revisionism as the only legitimate political program on the Polish “Jewish street”. Other Betar leaders, however, noted that comparing their movement to Piłsudski’s Poland and its members to patriotic Poles could serve a purpose that references to an ancient Jewish past or current Jewish religious customs never could. One of the most frequent charges against the Revisionist movement was that it lacked a clear, concrete political program, and that its vision for a mobilized society could never be implemented. Jabotinsky’s opponents depicted him as no more than a rabble-rouser whose stubborn demeanor and penchant for incendiary proclamations rendered him utterly incapable of exhibiting the qualities of caution and compromise required of a political statesman. To counter these claims, Revisionist leaders turned to Piłsudski and his Sanacja regime as concrete proof that a nationalist and semi-authoritarian political program could work in a newly-formed national homeland. They reasoned that if Jewish traditions could provide the movement with sanctification from the past, the Polish state could provide its members with a window into Revisionism’s future as a political movement in power. One of the most frequent strategies used by Betar’s leaders to cast their political program in the mold of the Sanacja regime was to liken Jabotinsky’s persona and style of political leadership to that of Piłsudski. In many respects, this was an easy task. As the Sanacja regime took root, the Polish government had instituted a cult of leadership for Piłsudski. Parades were frequently staged in his honor, while students at Polish public schools were taught to see Piłsudski as the “father of the fatherland,” and the “great educator of the people.”60 These were terms that had already been attributed to Jabotinsky by his Polish Jewish adherents well before his first official visit to Poland in 1927.61 As Betar developed its public culture in the early 1930s, the movement embellished upon the already-existing links between the two leaders. The movement’s journals described both men as charismatic military leaders, driven by an all-consuming ambition for statehood and national unity. Betar and Revisionist journalists were quick to point out that Jabotinsky, like Piłsudski, founded a legion of soldiers during the First World War to

60 Heidi Hein, Der Piłsudski-Kult und seine Bedeutung für den polnischen Staat 1926-1939 (Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2002), pp.139-150. 61 See Jakób Perelman, “Życiorys Włodzimierza Żabotyńskiego” Haszachar 1926, pp.11-15.

144 fight for national liberation. Writing in Trybuna Narodowa, the Revisionist movement’s weekly newspaper, one such journalist encouraged the movement’s members to describe Jabotinsky’s Jewish Legion, as “our ‘First Brigade,’” the military unit led by Piłsudski during the First World War.62 These attempts to portray Jabotinsky and Piłsudski as equals found their way into the movement’s public rituals. At synagogue ceremonies for the movement, Betar members would recite prayers for Jabotinsky and Piłsudski one after the other.63 By continuously casting Jabotinsky in Piłsudski’s image, Revisionist leaders assured Betar members that if a Jewish state came into being, Jabotinsky would conduct himself and rule in the same manner as Poland’s authoritarian leader. Well aware of these comparisons, Jabotinsky understood that any Revisionist description of Piłsudski could be used, implicitly or explicitly, to sanctify his own leadership style. His description of Piłsudski’s political behavior in a 1935 eulogy for the Polish statesman clearly bore the imprint of Jabotinsky’s own self-image as a politician. He began his article by describing Piłsudski as a man who loathed close contact with the Polish masses. Summoning Piłsudski’s voice, Jabotinsky wrote, “I want to share your troubles, I want to hear your complaints and wishes, but only from afar. And if I can bring you happiness, I’ll share in your joy, but only on one condition: that even through a window, I won’t hear the echoes of your applause and cries of “Bravo!”64 Jabotinsky’s close confidantes would have heard echoes in this description of Jabotinsky’s own periodic complaints about pandering to the public. Jabotinsky continued by noting that unlike Mussolini, Hitler or Salazar, Piłsudski was reluctant to call himself a dictator. If, Jabotinsky added, Piłsudski behaved as a dictator, he only did so at the behest of his political allies who saw no other option for Poland’s political future. Here too, one can hear echoes of Jabotinsky’s declarations that he had been forced into adopting increasingly authoritarian measures within the Revisionist movement, and that any dictatorial behavior he exhibited was conducted reluctantly and on the urging of his

62 “Nasza ‘Pierwsza Brygada’” Trybuna Narodowa 8 November 1935; “Związek Sjonistów Rewizjonistów, organizacja na terenie Polskiej; Do Wszystkich P.P. Starostów i P. Dyrektora w Krakowie.” 29 November 1926, APK/29/215/0/23; “MSW do wszystkich panów starostów” 5 November 1926 CAHJP/HM2/8561.8. 63 See, for example, “Miesięczne Sprawozdanie Sytuacyjne z ruchu społeczno-politycznego polskiego i mniejszości narodowych, Nr.7/33” AAN/MSW/1380/Mf1749/14. 64 Jabotinsky, “Fun der vaytns” Morgn Zhurnal 3 June 1935.

145 followers.65 Finally, Jabotinsky praised Piłsudski for refusing to create a clear doctrine for his followers. Once again adopting Piłsudski’s voice, Jabotinsky wrote, “Writing theories are for those who have nothing better to do.”66 By recounting Piłsudski’s supposed reticence to develop a coherent ideology for his regime, Jabotinsky sought to provide concrete evidence to his followers that political success was not contingent upon formulating a clear ideology. The image of Piłsudski that Jabotinsky presented in his eulogy, however, was far from the only one circulating among Poland’s Betar leaders. Both the essence of Piłsudski’s political style and his legacy for Jewish youth were contested subjects among Betar leaders. Just as they had done with their descriptions of Trumpeldor, they used their eulogies for Piłsudski to further their own conflicting visions of the place of violence and dictatorship in the Revisionist quest for a Jewish state. In contrast to Jabotinsky’s description of Piłsudski’s hostility towards leadership cults, a Revisionist leader in Kraków insisted in 1935 that a cult of leadership become a central part of the Revisionist program precisely because “the greatness of Poland” was “unthinkable without Marszal Piłsudski.”67 While Jabotinsky compared Piłsudski to other political statesmen, the editors of Trybuna Narodowa, Poland’s weekly Revisionist paper, compared him to Garibaldi and other famed European ‘liberation fighters.’68 The fact that Piłsudski “set his heart upon fighting in advance and prepared for it” was, they wrote, his “special contribution” to the legacy of national liberation fighters. They concluded that the need to train young men for war in times of peace was “Piłsudski’s truth, which lives in the legions of our Betar.”69 Elsewhere, Betar leaders went one step further by describing Piłsudski as a revolutionary. Rather than focus on his activities as the leader of the Polish Legions, they emphasized his underground activity prior to the First World War. Moshe

65 Vladimir Jabotinsky to Anya Jabotinsky, 27 February 1927 in Igrot Ze’ev Jabotinsky, vol. 5 p. 143; Jabotinsky to Members of the Revisionist Party, 22 March 1933 in Igrot Jabotinsky, Jabotinsky, vol. 8, p.185; Jabotinsky to members of Betar, 22 March 1933, Ibid., pp.8-9 “Der goyrel fun revizionizm” Der moment 26 March 1933, p.3; “Der zin fun plebitsit” Der moment 16 April 1933. 66 Ibid. 67 Mgr. A. Laufgang, “Problemy kulturalno-wychowawcze w Hacoharze” Trybuna Narodowa 25 January 1935. 68 See also Yosef Klarman, “Der mentsh fun belvedere” Ha-Medina 28 May 1935; “Nad trumną Józefa Piłsudskiego” Trybuna Narodowa 17 May 1935; “Ku czci pamięci marszałka Piłsudskiego” Trybuna Narodowa 12 July 1935. 69 “W dniu imienin Józefa Piłsudskiego” Trybuna Narodowa 22 March 1935

146 Goldberg’s eulogy claimed that the Sanacja leader’s “acts of smuggling, attacks on tsarist officials and languishing in prison” were “the foundation from which Piłsudski’s character began to form” and “his most important lesson for those who want to help and liberate their nation… ” He added that Piłsudski came to power not through the support of the Polish masses, but rather through the revolutionary acts of several hundred soldiers. Only through such a “hazardous deed,” Goldberg concluded, could Zionists create faith in their cause among Jews.70 In keeping with his strategy of presenting his followers with multiple and at times conflicting messages, Jabotinsky too offered a vision of Piłsudski’s legacy that supported these readings of his life. Speaking at a Betar gathering in the spring of 1935, Jabotinsky focused on Piłsudski’s legacy as a national liberation fighter. Above all, Jabotinsky told the gathered Betar members, Piłsudski could teach Jewish youth how to wage war in the face of defeat. Much like in his eulogy, Jabotinsky took on Piłsudski’s voice once more. The time, however, was different: here, Jabotinsky demanded that Betar members forever heed Piłsudski’s words: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”71 Jabotinsky’s emphasis on Piłsudski’s refusal to surrender in the face of defeat was particularly important in the early 1930s, a period in which it was difficult to argue that the Revisionist vision for the Jewish state would imminently come into being. From 1930 onwards, Jabotinsky was officially banned from Palestine, and the British government continued to limit Jewish immigration to the region. Entrusted by the British to distribute Palestine immigration certificates to Jews, the Zionist Organization attempted to further restrict Revisionists from entering Palestine. Against this backdrop, the model of Piłsudski’s seemingly hopeless struggle for Polish liberation allowed Jabotinsky to cast the Revisionist movement’s program as a romantic, noble quest, rather than as a fantasy that was impossible to fulfill. Betar’s leaders projected their representations of Piłsudski as a man eager and prepared to fight for his nation onto the Polish nation. Using the myth of the creation of independent Poland as a model, Betar’s leaders insisted that performing the qualities associated with “Polishness” had the power to transform Jewish youth. In March 1929, at the first regional conference of Betar in Białystok, Aaron Propes outlined what

70 Moshe Goldberg, “Yosef Pilsudski“ Ha-Medina 28 May 1935. 71 “Mowa wł. Żabotyńskiego na zlocie Betaru w Krakowie” Trybuna Narodowa 16 August 1935, p.4.

147 distinguished Betar’s model of behavior from other youth movements. He began by bemoaning the fact that Jewish political movements were producing too many “Einsteins,” whose command of the written word was of no use to the nation. Propes continued, “When you ask the Polish farmer or the Lithuanian, Have you read Marx? He’ll answer that he hasn’t. Of course he hasn’t, of course he doesn’t know about Marx. But he knows that it is his duty to fight, to defend and to conquer, because it is his duty to sacrifice.” 72 By turning “Einsteins” and the “Polish-Lithuanian” into binary opposites, Propes articulated one of the most salient and enduring features of Betar’s ideology: the demand to strip Jewish politics of the intellectual casuistry associated with socialism in favor of a more organic, intuitive, populist national sentiment. In Propes’ view, the Pole was a man of the masses, crowned with ignorance, an intuitive sense of duty to the state, and the unflinching ability to act.73 The ability to suspend excessive thinking was the key for Jews to successfully fight for national liberation. The willingness of Jewish soldiers to engage in combat was no less critical. Indeed, Betar members frequently described the Polish readiness to sacrifice as a model to emulate. Recounting to his fellow members in the northeastern city of Baranowicze his experience at a local parade for Poland’s Independence Day, with “masses of soldiers…marching in their liberated land,” a young Betar member wrote in 1933 that the Polish model of national redemption proved that “for liberation one must fight with sweat and blood.”74 This was a model, leaders pointed out, that was wholeheartedly embraced by Polish youth; a 1935 Betar journal from Radom reminded its members that Polish students “were the first in liberated Poland to volunteer to go into battle and spill their blood for the fatherland” during the Polish- Soviet War of 1919-21. Like Polish youth, Jewish youth would serve as the “vanguard of each revolution, of each national liberation struggle”75 faced by the Jewish nation.

72 “Protokol shel ha-pgisha ha-rishona ha-glilit shel brit trumpeldor,” March 1929, Jabotinsky Institute P- 153/2/1. 73 Ibid. 74 Barukh, “Hag ha-shihrur shel ha-am ha-polani” La-Nitsahon: Iton darga alef ken betar baranowicze, 6 December 1933, p.4. 75 Moishe Lindenboym, “Frayhayts kempfer” La-nitsahon:Iton mukdash le-hagigat yuval ha-asor le- yetsirat betar be-radom (January 1935), p.10.

148 While Betar leaders most often invoked Polish behavior in order to prepare their members for battle, they also used descriptions of the “Polish masses” to promote their vision of authoritarian politics. Speaking at Betar’s second national conference in Poland in 1931, Benjamin Lubotzky, a founding member of Betar in Riga who, like Propes, had gone on to advise Poland’s Betar, began by condemning the Jewish political tradition of shatdlanut. Lobbying governments to act in the interests of Jews, he argued, was not only ineffective, but reduced Jews to beggars. In contrast, he continued, “The Polish nation was liberated thanks to the fact that it believed in its own strength and the will of the nation. The nation chose its leader without thinking about the desires of others who perhaps did not want him…The leader of the nation has to be someone who expresses the will of the nation, and not the will of others.”76 Embedded within Lubotzky’s depiction of Poles embracing an authoritarian leader was the notion that one leader could somehow express and embody the “will” of the masses. Just as Poles did not hesitate to choose Piłsudski as their leader, Jews would choose Jabotinsky as theirs once they believed in their own strength and rejected the considerations of other nations in their midst. Lubotzky ended his speech to Betar’s delegates by echoing Jabotinsky’s remarks about viewing Christians as models to emulate: “We have to study and perform the deeds of the goyim and to learn from their normal lives.”77

Performing Revisionist Polskość: Texts, Landscapes, Parades, and Prayers Journal articles and speeches were not the only ways in which Betar leaders sought to create durable links between Polish patriotic culture and Revisionist Zionism. Betar’s architects created a variety of activities designed to encourage members to see themselves as heirs to Poland’s patriotic traditions, and to perform the qualities they associated with Polskość. One of the first strategies of Betar leaders was to instruct their members to consult textbooks published by both the Polish Scouting Movement and the

76 Lubotzky, Ve’ida artzit shel betar be-polanya (1931), pp.2-3. 77 Ibid.

149 government’s Ministry of Military Affairs.78 These textbooks covered a vast range of scouting, sport and paramilitary activities, from swimming and skiing to fencing, hand- to-hand-combat and target practice. Although many of the exercises included in these textbooks could be found in Betar’s own Hebrew and Yiddish-language handbooks, their inclusion in Betar’s curriculum served several unique functions. On a practical level, they provided clear instructions to the growing number of Betar members with little or no knowledge of Yiddish and Hebrew. No less significant was the fact that these textbooks allowed Betar members to literally perform, step by step, the same choreography that their Polish peers were engaging in. The textbook’s explanations of the moral value of the drills they described provided Betar members with further proof that their youth movement shared the goals of the Polish nation. The 1917 scouting handbook Harce Młodzieży Polskiej [Scouting Guide for Polish Youth], assigned to Betar members in 1928, illustrates the various functions these texts could serve. First, the text reinforced the connections between the education being received in Betar and the national Polish education they encountered at school. The textbook, for example, paired military training exercises with excerpts from the Polish Romantic literary classics that students had already encountered in the Polish public school curriculum. Betar members reading the handbook would have encountered passages from Sienkiewicz’s “In Desert and Wilderness” [W pustyni i w puszczy], which describes a young Polish boy living in , outwitting the Arab bandits who had captured him. The excerpt was followed by comments from Polish scout leaders praising the young boy for his “love of the fatherland and his fearless courage.”79 Second, Betar members could easily find parallels between Betar’s journals and the textbook’s descriptions of how Polish youth were expected to behave. A section devoted to knightlihood which called upon Polish youth to “always maintain the purity of one’s words” and remain “courteous…to women and

78 Lerner’s summer camp manual, for example, instructed Betar members to consult the following works: Podręcznik Przysposobienia Wojskowego (date and place of publication unknown), Jerzy Lewakowski, Terenoznawstwo i kartografia wojskowa: podręcznik dla organizacji wojskowych i drużyn skautowych (Lwów: Związkowa Drukarnia, 1916); Walerjan Jeremi Sliwinski, Sygnalizacja: podręcznik dla harcerzy (Warszawa: Nakład księgarni SW Wojciecha, 1921); Zygmut Wyrobek, Harcerz w polu: ćwiczenia w terenie (Lwów: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1926). See Zelig Lerner, Mahanot kayitz/Zumer Lagern (Warsaw: Grafja, 1932), p. 78. 79 Mieczysław Schreiber, Dr. Eugeniusz Piasecki, Harce Młodzieży Polskiej (Lwów: 1917) p.16. The text was cited in the first cultural instruction booklet produced by Betar in 1928. See Ben-Szem, Igrot Ha- mifkada ha-rashit 1 (Fall 1928), p.15.

150 children”80 would have sounded deeply familiar to Betar members familiar with Jabotinsky’s writings on the need for Jewish youth to behave like nobility.81 Above all, readers would have been able to clearly see the links between scouting, military combat and national liberation. What made this text particularly powerful was that it had been written in the throes of the First World War, when Polish Legion Fighters strove to bring about Poland’s independence. Much of the textbook was written in the future tense, preparing Polish youth for lives in their future state. When the textbook promised its members that “becoming a citizen in the liberated Republic, you’ll liberate yourself from all those defects that were imposed upon your country in slavery,” Betar members would have likely recalled the promise of Zionism to create a new Jew.82 By allowing their members to re-enact the Polish struggle for independence through these texts, Betar leaders hoped to show them that the Revisionist project to create a Jewish state in Mandate Palestine was feasible, so long as they followed the textbook’s call “to always be prepared to sacrifice your life in defense of the fatherland, and to battle with the enemy who threatens the country, whoever it may be and wherever they may appear.”83 The scouting manual’s use of Polish literature was only one way in which Betar integrated the texts Polish Jewish youth encountered in public school into the youth movement’s curriculum. A 1932 leadership manual, for example, instructed Betar members to read and discuss Polish Nobel laureate Władysław Reymont’s novels about Polish peasant life in order to prepare them for the existence that awaited them as colonists in Palestine.84 With their vivid depictions of the Polish rural landscape and its inhabitants, Reymont’s early twentieth-century novels may have struck Betar members as an odd set of texts to use as a guide to life in Palestine. The movement’s leaders, however, could persuade them to see Reymont’s depictions of the physical and spiritual resilience of Polish peasants trying to harvest food in an often inhospitable land as complementary to Betar’s program. Already staples in the Polish public school’s

80 Ibid., p.21. 81 See, for example, Jabotinsky, “Hadar” Cahiers du Betar 1931, pp.8-10; Brit Yosef Trumpeldor: Hartsa’ot, vikuhim, hahlatot (April 1931), pp.49-50. 82 Ibid., p.24. 83 Ibid. 84 “Di formen fun der idisher kolonizatsiye in erts-yisroel: a sikha far darga bet un darge gimel” Avodatenu 1,3 (February 1932), p.9.

151 curriculum, Reymont’s texts, when read and discussed in the context of the Betar club, presented an image of agrarian Polskość that Betar members could emulate. Not surprisingly, the image of Poles far more frequently presented to Betar members via Polish literature was that of the Polish soldier. The first issue of Tel Hai, for instance, included a Hebrew translation of a story by Kazimierz Przerwa Tetmajer, a member of the turn-of-the-century Young Poland literary movement, that described cavalry waiting for the signal to attack.85 By translating classic Polish literary texts into Hebrew, Betar leaders sought to demonstrate the cultural value of Hebrew language and literature through its ability to capture the linguistic and emotional nuances of the Polish language. By doing so, the translators of these texts were joining a broad array of Jewish nationalists who sought to translate works of European literature into Hebrew and Yiddish, believing that the value of a nation would be proven only once it could produce, or at least reproduce, great literature.86 No less important was the fact that these translations offered clear proof to Betar members that venerating Polish myths was an appropriate activity for young Zionists. Jabotinsky perhaps provided the best approbation for reading literature considered to be part of Poland’s national canon as Zionist texts. In 1932, he entered a debate raging in Poland about whether or not Adam Mickiewicz sought to organize a Jewish Legion to battle against Russian forces in the midst of the Crimean War.87 To Polish Jewish readers, these claims complemented their own readings of Mickiewicz as a man who had firmly

85 “Ha-parashim ha-yeshanim” Tel Hai 1 December 1929, p. 9. 86 Ken Moss, “Not the Dybbuk but Don Quixote: Translation, Deparochialization, and Nationalism in Jewish Culture” in Benjamin Nathans and Gabriella Safran, eds., Culture Front: Representing Jews in Eastern Europe, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp.196-240. 87 The debate was ignited by the publication of Roman Brandstaetter’s Legion żydowski Adama Mickiewicza (dzieje I dokumenty) (Warszawa: 1932). Brandstaetter claimed to provide conclusive proof that Mickiewicz sought to form a Jewish Legion. See also Abraham G. Druker, “Jewish Volunteers and the Ottoman-Polish Cossack Units during the Crimean War” Jewish Social Studies 16 (1954), pp.351-375. The article relies nearly exclusively on Brandstaetter’s text for evidence of Mickiewicz’s efforts to establish a Jewish Legion. For an excellent discussion of Brandstaetter’s book and its reception, see Katrin Steffen, Jüdische Polonität: Ethnizität und Nation im Spiegel der polnischsprachigen jüdischen Presse, 1918-1939, pp.130-136. Mickiewicz’s legacy had a matter of great debate among late-nineteenth century Polish nationalists. See Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth- Century Poland, pp.98-103.

152 believed in Polish-Jewish brotherhood.88 Not surprisingly, Polish nationalist literary and historical scholars were quick to denounce those who suggested that Mickiewicz had any affection for Jews. Jabotinsky not only defended the viewpoint shared by most members of the Polish-Jewish intelligentsia, but added a Zionist gloss to Mickiewicz’s life. He insisted that the legend was historical fact, and claimed that it proved that “Mickiewicz was a Zionist avant la lettre.”89 Just as Mickiewicz deemed the Polish and Jewish nations to be brothers in arms in the fight for an independent Poland, so too, Jabotinsky argued, would he have supported a Jewish Legion fighting for a Jewish state in Palestine. Just as Betar’s leaders believed that Polish literature, when read through a Zionist lens, could attract Jewish youth to their movement, so too did they believe that Poland’s physical landscape had the power to awaken Zionist sentiments. According to the editors of Trybuna Narodowa, the Revisionist movement’s Polish-language newspaper established in 1934, Betar leaders had chosen Kraków as the site of the movement’s 1935 world conference because the city possessed its “own symbolic language… with the walls, streets and old passageways narrating the memory of wonderful national traditions …. providing a living daily testimony to the… miracle that occurred in Poland, gaining its freedom after centuries of enslavement.” Immersed in the city’s rich history, members would be prepared to lead “the Jewish nation to a great, noble and proud way of life in our own country, on our own land.”90 The notion that Poland’s urban and rural landscapes were invested with national-historical significance would have been familiar to nearly all Betar members. Among the tasks of the Polish school system was to claim landscapes in Poland’s eastern borderlands region as Polish by connecting them with historical events that had taken place centuries beforehand.91 Outside the classroom, the government conducted a massive campaign to nationalize the country’s ethnically diverse

88 On Mickiewicz’s rendition of Polish-Jewish mysticism and messianism, see Heiko Haumann, “Adam Mickiewicz und der jüdisch-polnische Messianismus” in Bernhard Degen, ed., Fenster zur Geschichte, 20 Quellen—20 Interpretationen (: a.M., 1992), pp.247-259. 89 Jabotinsky, “Evreiskaia legion mitskievitcha” Razsvyet 11 September 1932. Several months beforehand, a Polish-Jewish journalist in Chwila had similarly described Mickiewicz as a Zionist. See H. Hescheles, “Sjonista Adam Mickiewicz” Chwila 17 October 1932. 90 “Na otwarcie konferencyj” Trybuna Narodowa 4 January 1935. 91 Poland’s Ministry of Education designed textbooks designed especially for this task. See, for example, Tadeusz Radliński, Krajoznawstwo: podręcznik dla klasy pierwszej szkół średnich i miejskich (Warszawa: M. Arct, 1919) and D. Gajówna, Krajoznawstwo: dla 4-go oddziału szkoły powszechnej i 1-ej klasy gimnazjum (Warszawa: Nasza Księg, 1931).

153 physical space—from Polonizing street names to erecting statues of Polish heroes in the midst of villages and towns dominated by Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Jews and other national minorities.92 Throughout the country, Polish youth movements engaged in an activity they dubbed krajoznawstwo— “knowing the land.” Through hiking, studying regional folklore and geography, they hoped to cultivate their members’ sense of Polishness.93 The editors of Trybuna Narodowa took these programs one step further. Presuming that Betar members instinctively understood the power of Poland’s national landscape to evoke patriotic feelings and behaviors, they asked members to imagine that Palestine’s landscape would evoke the very same sentiments. Betar’s decision to use the Polish landscape as a means to forge a connection to Palestine was largely born out of necessity. The vast majority of Betar’s members had never set foot in Palestine; they gleaned information about the region’s landscape primarily through the poetry and prose being produced by the Zionist movement, as well as through travelogues of journalists from Poland’s major Jewish newspapers. Many of Betar’s leaders, however, argued that in order to create an unbreakable bond between their recruits and their ideology, it was not enough for Betar members to construct a vivid picture of Palestine in their imagination. Drawing upon popular child development theories that emphasized the importance of physical rather than solely intellectual engagement, Betar leaders asserted that only with a visceral connection between Betar members and the natural landscape could the movement solidify its members’ devotion to Zion.94 Betar leader Isaac Remba, who penned several cultural guidebooks for the movement and later served as Jabotinsky’s personal secretary, offered a typical assessment in an article on the topic in 1932. After describing how centuries of young Jews had been “detached from nature, with most of their days wasted in heder,” he noted that “all the greats of pedagogical science” believed that observation, feeling and

92 For examples of the Polish government’s interest in creating Polish space in the kresy, see Kathryn Ward Ciancia, pp. 28-62, 103-141. 93 For a brief history of the krajoznawstwo movement, see Samuel Kassow, “Polish Jews and the Landkentenish movement in the 1920s and 1930s” in Julia Brauch et al, eds., Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008), pp.244-247. 94 See, for example, Hanna Libertal, Sefer Ha-nesharim (Warsaw: 1934), pp.12-13, 21-22, 30-31; Lerner, p. 3, Isaac Remba, “Ha-tsa’ad ha-rishon” Madrich Betar 2 (November 1932) pp.21-23.

154 experience were the keys to learning.95 A similar idea was echoed by Lejzerowicz, who had told a Revisionist conference in 1930 that unlike adults, with whom Revisionists could use the “weapon of reason,” young people would only accept ideology if it could become “second nature” to them, that is, if it was an intuitive experience rather than an intellectual decision.96 Zelig Lerner, the architect of Betar’s summer camp program, similarly noted that experiential education represented the only way to politicize Jewish youth. He began his 1932 summer camp handbook by arguing that “youth must have the possibility to be directly acquainted with reality, above and beyond all else, with nature” in order for them to embrace Revisionist ideology.97 Paradoxically, however, the “realities” offered by the summer camp and other outdoor experiences run by Betar were, at their heart, crafted, artificial, even theatrical experiences. With their imagined national homeland thousands of miles away, the Polish countryside became a stand-in for the Palestinian landscape. Among the most popular ways for Betar’s members to imagine living in Palestine were the month-long summer camps held throughout the Poland. Summer colonies for urban children had been a growing phenomenon in Europe from the turn of the century; by the interwar period, political summer camps were operating across the continent. Established by nearly every major Jewish political organization in Poland, summer camps provided movements like Betar with an opportunity to create imaginary republics of youth, in which their vision for the political future could be performed. Lerner’s richly- detailed handbook for summer camping began with instructions to local Betar leaders for how they could convince members that their journey to summer camp amounted to “going on a little adventure, traveling to a foreign land.”98 On the day of the departure, members were to sing a song about the desire to return to Zion; they were then to march to the train station, and sing “” before boarding the train to the “promised land” of the Polish countryside.99 The imaginary journey to Palestine would not only transcend geographical boundaries, but temporal ones as well. Once they were at the summer camp,

95 Isaac Remba, “Ha-tsa’ad ha-rishon,” p.21. 96 “Protokol der 8. Sitzung Mittwoch, den 13. August 1930” JI/G2/7/1/III 97 Zelig Lerner, Mahanot kayitz/Zumer Lagern (Warsaw: Grafja, 1932), p.1. 98 Ibid., p.5. 99 Ibid., p.12.

155 campers were frequently asked by their leaders to imagine that they had journeyed back into the ancient Jewish past. The handbook instructed leaders to tell Betar members during day trips outside the campgrounds to think of themselves as Jews in the desert or Maccabeees in the Judean hills.100 These national narratives, however, were far from the only ones that Betar members would have associated with the Polish landscape. Avraham Rozenfeld, one of the main liaisons between Betar’s headquarters in Warsaw and the hundreds of branches in Poland’s eastern borderlands, described how Betar instructors were ordered to march in the winter through the Okopy mountains in the kresy province of Tarnopol. There, a Betar leader ordered them to dig through the frost of the ground, explaining that the exercise was to prepare them for digging soil in the desert.101 While the link between the Polish winter and a desert in the Middle East was, to put it mildly, a stretch of the imagination, participants may have recalled the famous battles that took place nearby in December 1794 during the Kościuszko uprising. Indeed, as their leader commanded members to run through the mountains as if they were fleeing an enemy, Betar’s members may have called to mind the retreating Polish troops who had done the same a century and a half beforehand. As the Trybuna Narodowa article indicated through its description of Kraków, Betar’s leaders were not only aware of these connections, but deliberately used the Polish landscape to evoke Zionist sentiments. In addition to using “Polish” space to stage life in Palestine, Betar’s cultural architects constructed commemorative rituals that mirrored those performed at Polish patriotic events. The most widely practiced and publicized commemorative ritual performed by Betar groups was the laying of wreaths at Polish war memorials. Statues had served as a rallying point for Polish nationalist ceremonies as early as the 1870s, when Poles converged in Habsburg-controlled Galicia to celebrate the unveiling of Polish monuments.102 The interwar Polish war memorials, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe that sprung up in the wake of the First World War, often served as the starting or

100 pp.49-51. 101 Avraham Rozenfeld, “Tsvishn okopes: reportazh fun kurs fun madrikhim in zielonka” Ha-Medina 31 January 1934. 102 On the importance of national commemoration ceremonies in the creation of Polish nationalism, see Patrice Dabrowski, Commemorations and the Shaping of Modern Poland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).

156 ending points for nationalist celebrations held throughout the year. During celebrations at these war memorials, soldiers and scouting groups were nearly always designated as the first groups of Polish citizens to lay wreaths. Their prominence in these rituals ensured that the ceremony would not only valorize the act of dying for one’s country but would also demonstrate the military strength of the Polish nation in the present. As a movement that similarly saw the readiness of its members to sacrifice their lives as the chief measure of its national strength, Betar saw great value in staging a similar ceremony. Betar’s version of the ritual, first performed at the youth movement’s inaugural World Conference in Warsaw in 1929, was frequently staged when a newly-established group made its debut in a town or city.103 Whether in Warsaw, Kielce, Bolysław, Radom, Kraków or elsewhere, Betar members generally followed a common choreography when staging the event. Following a memorial service for Joseph Trumpeldor, Betar members would file out of the synagogue, parade through the streets of the town or city towards the war memorial, and lay a wreath. By performing a commemorative ritual that paid tribute to Jews who died fighting in the name of Zionist ideals at the very site where Polish scouts and military personnel commemorated Polish soldiers, Betar members could envision Poles and Jews as comrades in arms. By doing so, they could see the Revisionist version of the Zionist struggle as a worthy companion to its Polish counterpart. The very nature of these memorials facilitated this process; unlike national statues of the late nineteenth century, which generally paid tribute to a single heroic military figure, the interwar memorials attempted to commemorate the lives of tens of thousands of “ordinary” soldiers. Writing about the Tombs of the Unknown Soldier that sprung up throughout Europe in the 1920s, Thomas Laqueur has observed that in their attempts to remember everyone, these memorials remembered no one in particular.104 Betar used the very ambiguity of these memorials to their advantage. Because the

103 For examples of these ceremonies, see “Nekhtige brit-trumpeldor fayerungen in varshe” Haynt 2 January 1929; “Ha-pegisha ha-olamit ha-rishona le-mifkadei betar” Igrot livnei betar 15 July 1929, p.3; “Kinus fun betar fun kielcer galil in radom” Der nayer veg August 1932, p.18; “Di legion fayerungen in poyln” Der nayer Veg 10 September 1932; p. 15; Wojewoda Kielecki, Sprawozdanie Sytuacyjne Nr.6 czas od dnia 1-go do 30-go czerwca” AAN/MSW/1378/AMZHP/1537/12t.11, p.200. For retrospective accounts of the ceremony, see the memoir drafts of Aharon Propes, JI/P-183/2/1, pp.2-3; Sefer Radom (Tel Aviv: Irgun Yots’ei Radom Be-Israel, 1961), pp.201-202. 104 Thomas W. Laqueur, “Memory and Naming in the Great War” in John Gillis, ed., The Politics of Commemoration (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp.150-167.

157 memorials did not specify the names of those who were to be remembered, the ceremonies staged by Betar at these sites allowed their members to conjure up, at one and the same time, the memory of both Polish and Zionist fighters. Betar members were not the only constituency kept in mind by the youth movement’s leaders during these war memorial rituals. Much like the Betar members who routinely described the “Polish gaze” as they paraded through their towns, Betar’s leaders saw their public rituals as opportunities to court the support of local and national Polish government officials. Aware that Polish government officials or informants were more likely than not to be within earshot at public political events, Betar leaders in towns throughout the country could expect their declarations of loyalty to the Polish state to reach officials in Warsaw. Indeed, over the course of the interwar period, the Sanacja regime had set up an intricate network of surveillance. Deeply suspicious of the loyalty of both national minorities and radical right-wing Polish nationalists, local police units and other regional government officials routinely sent letters to Warsaw’s Ministry of Internal Affairs about the political activities of citizens within their midst, from protests and parades to weekly club meetings. These reports made clear that the government was taking note of Betar’s public displays of Polskość. A report sent in September 1932 from the southeastern town of Hrubieszów, for example, described how Betar leaders instructed the youth movement’s members to emulate Polish youth at a ceremony commemorating the deaths of Jewish Legion volunteers.105 Throughout 1933, local reports streamed into the Ministry of Interior that described how Revisionist youth broke out into Polish national hymns and cheers for Piłsudski when protesting against Hitler’s rise to power.106 One such report from the Polesie province in October 1933 reported that the future Prime Minister of Israel, , then a local Betar leader, gave a speech to two hundred and fifty Betar members in Kobryn that “emphasized the favorable relations of the Polish government to the Jewish minority and assured it [the government] of the readiness of Brit Trumpeldor’s members to defend its borders.” It

105 “Miesięczne Sprawozdanie Sytuacyjne Nr. 8/32r, Lublin, dnia 5 wreśnia 1932 r,” Lublin, Mięsieczne Sprawozdanie Sytuacyjne z ruchu społeczno-politycznego polskiego i mniejszości narodowych, AAN/MSW/1380/MF1749/14, p.197. 106 “Sprawozdanie Sytuacyjne Nr. 5 za czas od dnia 1-go do 31-go maja 1933r,” Bodzentyn, Urząd Wojewódzki Kielecki Wydział Społeczno-Polityczny, AAN/MSW/1378/AMZHP1537/12t.11, p.163.

158 was, the report added, a “rich program.”107 Government reports also noted that Betar delegations participated in the “Sea Holiday” (Święto Morza) ceremonies, staged to demonstrate Poland’s readiness to defend its access to the Baltic Sea.108 Betar not only promised to help protect Poland from external dangers. In other ceremonies, the youth movement’s members pledged to stand in solidarity with the Polish nation against enemies within the Polish state. At a Betar demonstration in the southeastern city of Borysław in the summer of 1934, Revisionist leaders asked the two thousand attendees to observe a minute of silence to commemorate the assassination of Poland’s Minister of the Interior, killed several days beforehand by Ukrainian nationalists.109 Among the so-called internal enemies of the Polish state that were mentioned in government reports devoted to Betar’s activities, Jewish socialist organizations stood out. These reports noted how Jewish socialist groups aimed to discredit Betar by linking the movement to the Polish government.110 In the spring of 1933, for example, a government official in the province of Kielce reported that supporters of a left-leaning Zionist group tried to gain more votes for the Zionist Organization’s World Congress by promoting “the notion that Jabotinsky enjoys the support of the [Polish] government because of his tactics.”111 That same month, they reported that during a left-wing Zionist election meeting, Revisionist members had barged into the room singing “My pierwsza Brygada”—the anthem of the Polish Legion.112 Through these reports, government officials also became aware that Betar was one of the only Jewish political groups in Poland to echo and endorse the widespread belief among Poles that socialist and communist parties were teeming with Jews. Propes, for example, claimed in the youth movement’s national journal in 1930 that it was “no secret that Jewish youth today fill the ranks of extreme Left organizations and occupy, according to their number, a very

107 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne n.6 za czerwiec 1933,” Urząd Wojewódzki w Brześciu, Wojewoda Podelski AAN/MSW/1183/0/16 p. 96. 108 “Kielce, Urząd wojewódzki kielecki wydział społeczno-polityczny, II Sprawozdania miesięczne z ruchu społecznego legalnego.”AAN/MSW/1378/AMZHP 1537/12t.11, p. 138. 109 “Poświęcenie sztandaru Betaru w Borysławiu” Trybuna Narodowa 17 June 1934. 110 “Kielce, Urząd wojewódzki kielecki wydział społeczno-polityczny, II Sprawozdania miesięczne z ruchu społecznego legalnego.”AAN/MSW/1378/AMZHP 1537/12t.11, pp. 198a, 199a. 111 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne nr. 6 1-30 Czerwiec 1933” Urząd wojewódzki kielecki wydział społeczno- polityczny, II Sprawozdania miesięczne z ruchu społecznego legalnego.”AAN/MSW/1378/AMZHP 1537/12t.11, p.198a. 112 Ibid., 199a.

159 prominent role.” 113 In a magazine dedicated to training Betar instructors, a Warsaw Betar leader similarly noted that “Marxist radicalization is far more widespread among Jewish youth than among others” and added that nearly all of the early theoreticians of socialism were Jewish.114 While it is true that the percentage of Jews who made up the membership in Poland’s left-wing political movements far exceeded the percentage of Jews in the population as a whole, Betar leaders, like Polish government officials, both mistakenly and deliberately interpreted this fact as proof that the majority of Jewish youth were under the influence of the Left. 115 Moreover, Betar leaders confirmed the Polish claim that these youth posed a serious threat to the Polish nation. Government reports that recounted local Jewish left-wing groups branding Betar as anti-socialist only reinforced Betar’s claim that the movement shared the interests of the country’s political leadership. Indeed, as early as 1926, government officials noted that the Revisionist movement was calling for its members to follow in Piłsudski’s footsteps and conduct a ‘Sanacja’ campaign in Jewish communities throughout Poland, “cleansing” them of socialists and other political groups perceived as a threat by the Polish government.116 As much as Betar leaders sought to gain the approval of officials in Warsaw, they devoted most of their energy to forging strong relationships with local Polish officials. Their ability to meet regularly with these officials made courting their support a much easier task. One way in which Betar leaders reached out to local officials was by inviting them to attend their public events. When Betar branches throughout the country sent updates about their activities to their movement’s nationally circulated journals, they frequently noted the presence of local military and government officials, as well as local non-Jewish civilians. Betar branches were often sure to note, as the branch in the kresy town of Warkowicz did in 1933, that “the most important members of the Jewish and Christian population in town attend our events.”117 In some cases, Polish government

113 A P—S, “Oyf falshe vegn” Tel Chaj 1(3) 1 February 1930, p.7. 114 Moshe Goldberg, “Idishe kozmopolitanizm un geto psikhologiye” Avodatenu December 1932, pp.22 115 Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenburg, “Did Ethnic Balance Matter? Elections in Interwar Poland” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 24 (2011), pp.171-186. 116 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne za miesiąc wrzesień 1926 r” Archiwum Państwowe m.st. Warszawie, 475/0/10; Michal Strikowski, Powiatowej Komendzie Policji Państwowej w Chrzanowie, Starosta: Trześniowski. 11 January 1927” Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie, 29/215/0/23. 117 Di velt 4 October 1933, p.15.

160 officials took part in the ceremonies themselves. A report about a synagogue service in the southeastern town of Bolechów, organized by Betar to honor Piłsudski’s memory, not only provides a case study of the dual roles of participants and observers that Polish government officials could play, but also captures the innovative ways in which Betar attempted to stage Polish-Jewish brotherhood.118 From its very beginning, the ceremony made clear to its participants that local officials supported the Revisionist cause. To open the ceremony, Bolechów’s mayor rose to the bima to deliver a speech about Piłsudski’s legacy. Following the mayor, the synagogue’s cantor chanted El Maleh Rachamim, a Jewish prayer for the deceased, in Piłsudski’s memory. If offering a prayer typically reserved for Jews to honor a Catholic Polish politician departed from traditional Jewish practice, what followed was equally unconventional. Immediately after the cantor finished chanting El Maleh Rachamim, the ceremony’s paricipants, including the government officials, joined together in song with Boże, Coś Polskę [God, Protect Poland]. The most popular Polish Catholic hymn of the nineteenth century, Boże, Coś Polskę was considered by Catholic Poles to be an integral part of their liturgy, and was used as the conclusion to daily mass.119 The recitation of both Catholic and Jewish prayers not only made clear to government officials that Jews, like Poles, deemed God to be the primary agent of history, with salvation—both personal and national—in his hands. It also implied that God sanctified the Polish-Jewish brotherhood being staged by Betar and the government officials. While most of these ceremonies were staged on a local level, Betar’s national leadership occasionally attempted to organize mass demonstrations to promote their vision of Polish-Jewish brotherhood. In the same month that the Bolechów ceremony took place, Betar’s Head Command organized its largest ceremony yet. In July, 1935, Propes sent out a circular to Betar chapters across the country instructing members to convene in Kraków for a mass assembly to pay tribute to Piłsudski.120 In the meantime, Betar leaders in Palestine informed the Polish Ambassador in Tel Aviv that they would

118 “Listy z kraju” Trybuna Narodowa 5 July 1935, p.8. 119 For a discussion of the significance of Boże, Cós Polskę for Polish Catholics, see Brian Porter-Szűcs, Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity and Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp.226-227, 234. 120 “Ku czci pamięci maszałka Piłsudskiego” Trybuna Narodowa 12 July 1935.

161 be filling an urn with soil from Tel Hai, the site where Joseph Trumpeldor was killed, and bringing it to Sowiniec, where a monument commemorating both Piłsudski and Poland’s struggle for independence was being constructed. By doing so, Betar leaders drew the attention of the Polish government to the elaborate ceremony. On a rainy Sunday morning in August, thousands of Betar members congregated in a sports field with Polish and Zionist flags in hand, awaiting the arrival of the urn.121 By six o’clock in the evening, after Jabotinsky had arrived, a group of Betar members rode on motorcycles to the center of the sports field. They delivered the urn, wrapped in ribbons with colors of the Polish and Zionist flag, to Betar’s leaders. Addressing thousands of Betar members, along with representatives of the city’s government, Jabotinsky explained the significance of bringing the soil from Palestine to Piłsudski’s mound. He described Piłsudski and Trumpeldor as kindred spirits who had at long last been united: “If only these two great figures could have met to speak with one another about the deep secret concealed in their souls. Tomorrow, in your transferring of the soil of Tel Hai to the soil of Sowiniec, they will converse with one another.” Both men, he continued, would share their patriotic “feelings that lead to eternal, indestructible sacrifices on the altar of the fatherland.”122 By describing Trumpeldor and Piłsudski as mirror images of one another, Jabotinsky not only portrayed Revisionist Zionism as the equal of Polish nationalism, but also encouraged Betar members to see Polish and Zionist national narratives as cut from the same cloth. The mixing of soil dramatized Jabotinsky’s blending of these national narratives: just as Piłsudski had a place in the national imagination of Jews, so too could Trumpeldor’s spirit nourish a site of Polish commemoration, and, in turn, the national imagination of Poles. In addition to notifying the Polish government that they were staging commemorative ceremonies for Piłsudski in Poland, Betar leaders also drew attention to their efforts to honor Piłsudski’s memory in Palestine.123 The most ambitious of these projects was a fundraiser to build an immigrant absorption center for Polish Jews in

121 For descriptions of the event, see “Der betar kinus in kroke” Ha-Medina 9 September 1935; “W skrótach” Haneszer 3-4 (August-September 1935), p. 50; “Mowa wł. Żabotyńskiego na Złocie Betaru w Krakowie” Trybuna Narodowa 16 August 1935, p.4; I. Rodal, “Gdy groby mówią do siebie (Reportaż z krakowskiego zlotu Betaru” Trybuna Narodowa 16 August 1935, p.4. 122 “Jabotinsky no’em lifnei ha-noar ha-leumi” Ha-Yarden 28 August 1935. 123 “Listy z kraju” Trybuna Narodowa 5 July 1935, p.8.

162 Palestine named after Piłsudski. In their appeal to gain financial support for the project, Revisionists in Poland published the following explanation of its significance: When Jewish newcomers from Poland enter into the building, they will be reminded of the dear and beloved Marshal. Inside the building, they will find an atmosphere of true, living, fervent patriotism, free from chauvinism, but at the same time free from compromises; they’ll find there the national iron will for independence, whose greatest teacher was Piłsudski. And they will remember a country that raised them and generations of their ancestors… their love will last and will never change towards that country…their beloved old Fatherland.124

The appeal nicely captures the messages about Polish nationalism that Betar leaders intended to instill in their members. By describing Piłsudski as their teacher and his model of nationalism as the example to emulate, Betar members could envision themselves both as Zionists and ambassadors of Poland, bringing the best of Poland to Palestine. No less significant were the lessons that Revisionist leaders claimed Piłsudski imparted to their youth movement. Readers of the appeal would have heard echoes of Jabotinsky’s “iron wall” slogan in Piłsudski’s alleged call for his nation to retain an “iron will” that was “free from chauvinism but at the same time free from compromises.”125 The implicit reference to national enemies invited readers to draw a comparison between the Polish government’s relationship to its country’s national minorities, and the relationship of Yishuv Jews to the region’s Arab inhabitants. Readers may well have recalled the Polish government’s 1930 violent “pacification campaign” in eastern Galicia, aimed at crushing the activity of Ukrainian irredentist organizations in the region. By 1935, the Polish government had banned the self-government of Ukrainian villages, placed them under Polish military rule, and meted out collective punishments for acts of . The Revisionist appeal’s call for a nationalism “free from chauvinism, but at the same time free from compromises” implied that the Revisionist position on Palestine’s Arabs echoed the Polish government’s promise to simultaneously provide equality to national minorities while defending the right of Poles to retain control over the country. Finally, by describing the enduring love of Revisionists for the “old fatherland,” the appeal at once permitted Betar members to express Polish patriotism while at the same time making clear that their future lay in Palestine.

124 “Dom im. J. Piłsudskiego w Palestynie” Trybuna Narodowa 21 June 1935, p.7. 125 Ibid.

163 Brothers in Arms Beyond the Parade?

While appeals to raise funds for the “Piłsudski House” project were directed primarily towards Polish Jews, Revisionist leaders also notified Polish officials of the venture, offering further evidence of the bond between the Revisionist movement and the Polish state.126 Betar’s public rituals of Zionist Polskość aimed not only to shape the attitudes of Polish government officials, but also to influence the decisions those officials made regarding the youth movement’s activities. Above all, they sought financial and tactical support from the government. Of all the advantages Betar’s leaders saw in gaining the support of the Polish government, entry into the country’s paramilitary training programs was considered the most coveted prize. Throughout the early 1920s, the Polish government had attempted to bring all paramilitary youth groups operating in Poland under its wing. These efforts were doubled once Piłsudski rose to power. By 1927, he had ordered the formation of a National Agency for Physical Education and Military Preparation (Państwowy Urząd Wychowania Fizycznego i Przysposobienia Wojskowego, hereafter PW). The agency aimed to create a new cadre of recruits for the army. It also sought to provide basic training to the country’s civilians, particularly in the kresy region, in the hopes that they would form voluntary paramilitary defense units to protect Poland’s borders. With local branches throughout the country, the organization provided financial support as well as sports and military instruction to Polish youth movements such as the Polish Scouting Organization (Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego), the Sokół organization and the Rifleman’s Association (Związek Strzelecki). By 1929, over 265,000 youth movement members in Poland had participated in PW programs.127 The incentives provided by the Polish government to join PW were coupled with threats to paramilitary youth movements that refused to do so. The Polish government made clear that any paramilitary organization that did not join PW would be forbidden to use weapons while training its members—if they were permitted to convene at all. Indeed, as much as the Agency sought to provide military training to young citizens of

126 “Listy z kraju” Trybuna Narodowa 5 July 1935, p.8. 127 Janusz Odziemkowski, p.100. See also Jan Kesik, Naród pod bronią i społeczeństwo w programie polskiej polityki wojskowej 1918-1939 (Wrocław: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1998) and Piotr Rozwadowski, Państwowy Urząd Wychowania Fizycznego Przysposobienia Wojskowego, 1927-1939 (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 2008).

164 the Polish state, it also served as a pretext for dismantling any paramilitary youth group that opposed the Sanacja regime. Military officials were instructed to be particularly vigilant about curbing the military training activities of Jewish and Ukrainian youth movements. Simultaneously, however, government officials entertained the possibility of including national minorities in PW groups, and wrote of the potential of the agency, much like public schools, to transform national minorities into loyal citizens.128 It was against this backdrop that Betar leaders sought to gain access to PW’s resources. As soon as Betar had held its first conference in December of 1927, the youth movement’s leaders reported that its members in Warsaw had begun to enroll in their local PW units.129 From the central city of Radom, the Galician cities of Stryj and Stanisławów to the small town of Baremel on the east-central fringes of the kresy, government official reports and Betar journals reported that Betar units sought to form their own PW units or join already existing ones.130 In February 1929, Betar’s command in Warsaw stated that a government official from PW would supervise a course to instruct Betar leaders how to teach the skills required for military combat and defense.131 Polish military officials were present during these courses, held in Poland’s urban centers, throughout the early 1930s.132 By this point, dozens of local Betar branches reported that they had either joined or formed PW units in towns like Otwock and Ostrów-Mazowiecka, as well as in larger cities such as Lublin, Przemyśl, Lwów and Radom. As a result, they were provided with guns and ammunition, were trained by a

128 On the fear of armed irredentist paramilitary activity among adolescent national minorities and the prospect of making them loyal citizens of Poland through PW participation, see “Kuratorjum Okręgu Szkolnego Wołyńskiego do Pana Wojewody Wołynskiego w Łucku, w sprawie udziału mniejszości narodowych w pracy PW” 6 December 1927, CAW/I.300.69.23 and “Spraw udziału mniejszości narodowych w pracy PW” 23 November 1928, CAW/I.300.69.23. 129 “Din ve-heshbon fun dem 2-tn alpoylishn tyisyonistishn revizionistishn tsuzamenfar” Der Emes 3 (20 January 1928), p.7. 130 “Korespondentsies” Der Emes 28 September 1928, p.13; “Do pana wojewody w kielcach Radomski starosta powiatowy” Urząd Wojewódzki Kielecki, Wydz. Bezpieczeństwa, APwK/MSW/100/0/3158; “Fun unzer bavegung” Tel Chaj 3 (1 February 1930), p.15; “Do pana wojewody w Stanisławowie 3 Lutego 1930r” CAHJP/HM2/8652. 131 “Fun tsentrale instruktorn shule in varshe” Der Emes 20 February 1929 p.19. 132 “Betar arbet in poyln” Ha-medina 5 March 1933 p. 8; Isaac Remba, ed., Shnatayim: din ve-heshbon shel netsivut betar be-polanya (Warsaw: Kairo,1934), p. 11; “Z ruchu betarowego w Środkowej Małopolsce” Trybuna Narodowa 31 August 1934, p.7.

165 member of the Polish Army, and could use the local PW clubrooms for recreational purposes.133 Training with weapons under the supervision of Polish officers was not the only benefit afforded to Betar groups that joined PW units. Their participation also gave them the privilege of marching with guns alongside Polish soldiers during Polish patriotic celebrations—a privilege that Betar members in Częstochowa, Zółkiew and Lwów, as well as Polish government officials in Stryj, were sure to note in their reports of these events.134 Marching with weapons in hand alongside Polish soldiers at a Polish patriotic event provided many Jewish youth with the chance to prove to their non-Jewish peers, as well as to themselves, that the Polish Army saw them as worthy partners in national demonstrations of strength, honor and sacrifice. They hoped that the rituals they staged with Polish government officials would provide proof that they were not a national minority seeking to overthrow Polish rule, but rather one that was ready to defend the country’s borders from attack in the name of the common values and goals they shared with the Polish nation. When coupled with Betar’s insistence that Polish Jews emigrate to Palestine, these pledges gave the Polish government compelling evidence to see the youth movement as a potential ally in its quest to create civilian paramilitary units that could help pave the way towards the eventual Polonization of the kresy. In some cases, Betar’s public displays of an alliance with PW officials could also provide the movement’s leaders with increased prestige and power among local Jews. Ya’akov Hetman, a Betar leader in the east-central town of Luboml, became the only Jew to be appointed to his local PW council, which included representatives of the town’s community council, the police and locally stationed military officials. Reflecting upon his time on the council, Hetman later recalled, “I became a sort of unofficial representative of the town’s Jews to the authorities… Suddenly I found myself, a young eighteen-year-old man, representing the local Jews by the power of my position as a Betar captain.”135 While Hetman’s

133 “Algemayner iberblik iber di tsen yerige tetigkayt fun brit trumpeldor in radom” La-nitsahon: iton mukdash le-hagigat yuval ha-asor le-yetsirat betar be-radom (Styczeń 1935) p.26. 134 See, for example “Listy z kraju” Trybuna Narodowa 22 June 1934, p.8; “Sprawozdanie Sytuacyjne. Sytuacja ogólna dla wszystkich mniejszości narodowych” 9 July 1933, AAN/MSW/1186/0/3, p.72; “Wyczynki z dziennika obozowego K.I.” Jardenu October 1932; “Khaveyrim shraybn fun di shtet un shtetlekh” Di velt 30 May 1933, p.14. 135 Hetman, p. 2.

166 retrospective account may be inflated, it nonetheless provides a window into the types of power Betar members and leaders believed they could attain through personal interactions with Polish government officials. That is not to say, however, that Polish government officials always offered support to Betar, or that they never viewed the youth movement with any suspicion. Despite the Polish government’s attempt to centralize its decision-making process on matters of military training, the question of whether or not a youth movement could join a local PW unit was often left to provincial or county committees. The final decision could rest with either a local representative of the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Military Affairs, a city official or a town councilman. An exchange of letters between PW representatives and provincial officials in the province of Lublin demonstrates the contingencies involved in whether or not a Betar unit was granted government support. In 1931, the regional director of PW notified provincial officials of the desire of Betar groups in the towns of Biłgoraj, Hrubieszów and Tomaszów to join their training units, and asked them to verify whether or not “from the perspective of loyalty to the country, their [Betar’s] presence would be harmful.”136 Although the Lublin regional government had received directives three years beforehand describing Betar as loyal to the Polish state, a provincial official responded that the movement was “connected to the Zionist movement, whose negative stance towards the country [Poland] and its government is well-known”; their participation in the PW units, he concluded, would be “entirely inadvisable.”137 What exactly was “well-known” about Zionist beliefs and behaviors was left unsaid; historians can only guess at what evidence the Polish government official drew upon to conclude that Zionists were a threat to the Polish state. He may well have recalled the National Minorities’ Bloc of 1922, a coalition of Jewish, Ukrainian and Belorussian minorities led by Yitzhak Grinboym.138 With the number of Ukrainian terrorist attacks rising in the kresy—the very region where Betar had its stronghold—

136 “Do Pana Wojewody Lubelskiego w Lublinie” 14 September 1931 Urząd Wojewódzki Lubelski Wydział Społeczno-Polityczny 1919-1939, APL/1138/26. 137 “Lubelski Urząd Wojewódzki do Dowóztwa Orkręgu Korpusu Nr. II. Okręgowy Urząd WF I PW” 29 September 31, APL/1138/26. For the 1926 government report describing the Revisionist movement’s loyalty to the Polish state, see “Wojewoda Lubelski do Panów Starostów Województwa Lubelskiego” 24 November 1926, APL/35/403/0/492. 138 On Grinboym and the National Minorities Bloc, see Ezra Mendelsohn, Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915-1926 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), pp.213-222.

167 Polish government officials may have been particularly skittish about the prospect of having another armed national minority in its midst, particularly one that had claimed common cause with Ukrainians in the past. Like many of his contemporaries in the Ministry of Military Affairs, the provincial official may have also believed that Jews being trained by the Polish army—whether as soldiers or as volunteers in local defense corps—were communists in disguise.139 Noting that the participation of Betar in PW would set a precedent for other Zionist movements to flood into the organization, the provincial official most likely had in mind the range of socialist Zionist organizations that operated in his province. Although many other local officials throughout the country granted Betar the right to participate in PW, the fears expressed by the Lublin provincial official were not uncommon, and were exacerbated at various moments. In the fall of 1933, for example, national government officials in Warsaw convened to discuss the dangers of providing military training to young Zionists. Their meeting was triggered by the creation of Brit Hahayal (The Soldier’s Alliance), a Revisionist organization for former soldiers of the Polish Army and young Jewish men of conscription age who had been not yet been called to service. Observing Brit Hahayal’s first conference, which brought together some three thousand participants, Catholic Polish journalists from Warsaw’s right-wing, ethno- nationalist newspapers painted the organization as a threat to the Polish state, and criticized the Sanacja government for permitting its existence. Deeply sensitive to accusations that they did not represent the national interests of Poles, government officials quickly gathered to determine both the legality of Brit Hahayal and Jewish youth movements undergoing military training within PW. The variety of solutions proposed to end their public relations crisis made clear that creating consensus would be a difficult task. The meeting opened with officials from the Ministry of Military Affairs, Ministry of Education and Warsaw’s city government expressing deep frustration over the uneven and uncoordinated decision-making patterns of local and provincial officials with regards to Betar’s paramilitary training alongside

139 Rezmer, “Służba wojskowa Żydów w siłach zbrojnych Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej“ in Zbigniew Karpusa and Waldemara Rezmera, eds., Mniejszości Narodowe I wyznaniowe w siłach zbrojnych Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej, 1918-1939 (Toruń: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2001), pp.97-110.

168 Polish youth movements. Describing their opposition to Brit Hahayal, one representative from the Ministry of the Interior echoed previous concerns that had been voiced about including Betar in PW: “First a Jewish organization, tomorrow a Ukrainian organization, the next day a Belorussian Organization—it is unacceptable.”140 Another representative from the Ministry of Education suggested that young Jews could receive military training only if they were under the auspices of a scouting group for Jews that would be created by the Polish Scouting Organization. A representative from PW drew a distinction between Jewish “youth” and Jewish reservists. While he supported Betar’s participation in PW, he urged the government to forbid any national minorities from creating their own reservist organizations. Others favored the operation of Betar and Brit Hahayal, so long as they did not recruit members attending Polish schools. These proposals highlighted how government officials struggled to determine the place of young Jews in the Polish state. The Ministry of the Interior representative who opposed Jewish participation in PW and warned of future Ukrainian or Belorussian reservist organizations demonstrated how the ever-present fear of armed irredentist national minorities could shape the Polish government’s approach to Zionists. Even when government representatives saw value in Jews participating in PW, they could not agree upon the criteria that would determine whether or not a Jew was a threat or potential ally to the Polish state. For the PW representative who distinguished between Jewish “youth” and Jewish veterans, age served as the chief criteria to determine the extent to which Jews could be trusted patriots of Poland. When another minister insisted that both the Revisionist’s youth movement and reservist organization refrain from recruiting Jewish youth learning in Polish schools, he made clear that the government considered these youth to be, on some level, the property of the Polish state, an elite whose loyalty would be compromised by contact with a Jewish political organization. The meeting also made clear that government officials could not agree upon the extent to which Jews should interact with Poles in government-sponsored programs. Implicit in the proposal to create a separate faction of the Polish Scouting Movement to control the scouting education of

140 “Protokol: Konferencji międzyministerialnej w dn. 9.11.33 w Wydziale Narodowościowym Min. Spraw Wewnętrznych w sprawie ustalenia ustosunkowania władz do stowarzyszeń żydowskich wogóle, a w szczególności do stowarzyszeń znajdujących się pod wpływami sjonistów rewizjonistów” APwK/100/0/3420, pp.249-552.

169 Jewish youth was the belief that integrating young Polish Jews into already existing Polish scouting groups was inconceivable. The aftermath of these meetings was no less instructive. Ultimately, the statute of Brit Hahayal was approved by the Ministry of the Interior. The decision was made without the input of PW officials. Once again, a lack of communication between government departments played a role in determining the rights bestowed upon the Revisionist movement. The conditions imposed by the government upon the movement betrayed the ambiguous position the movement occupied in the eyes of Polish government officials. Brit Hahayal was permitted to conduct military exercises and participate in Polish patriotic parades, so long as they refrained from wearing the uniforms of the Polish Army. While they could participate in parades alongside Polish soldiers, the government wanted to ensure that parade spectators would not mistaken them for representatives of the Polish state, or presume that the government fully endorsed their program. Betar leaders also occasionally expressed uncertainty and unease about the relationship—both symbolic and real—that they were cultivating with the Polish government. While local Betar leaders frequently wrote into their nationally circulated journals with news of their units joining PW, not one article ever appeared in these journals describing interactions with either PW’s officers or non-Jewish participants. The journal’s editors had good reason to be reticent about providing written accounts of Betar members training with weapons. Published evidence of their reliance on the Polish government would have drawn attention to the fact that the movement had neither the personnel nor the materials to provide military training to Jewish youth. Their insistence that Betar’s values converged with those of the Polish government served to justify the fact that they had to rely on the Polish government to provide the very “Zionist” skills they claimed they could provide to Jewish youth. When Betar journals described the military training of the movement’s members, they most often emphasized the ways in which their activists were producing a new and distinct national culture—from the creation of a Hebrew military lexicon to newly-created emblems, insignia and uniforms.

170 The movement’s anxiety about producing a unique national culture occasionally shaped the ways in which its leaders described Polish culture. Although at times keen to offer detailed reports celebrating their presence in Polish patriotic parades, at other times, they felt the need to assure their members that their interactions with Poles and Polish culture were not attempts to dissolve Jewish distinctiveness. In 1935, for example, a Trybuna Narodowa article lampooned the secular Jewish poet and satirist Julian Tuwim, who had recently written that Jews were in large part to blame for the antisemitic beliefs of Poles. The article opened by mocking Tuwim for his attempts to “no longer [be] a Jew but a one-hundred-percent member of the Polish nation.” 141 What was particularly interesting about the article was its definition and assessment of assimilation. Defined as “a natural process that takes place within social or territorial boundaries of different ethnic groups,” the article argued that assimilation was “a positive agent for the exchange of values between the spirits of different nations—but it can never be permitted to lead to the disappearance of a living nation.”142 In contrast to most Zionist leaders of the period, who solely used the word “assimilation” as a pejorative term to signal the absence of Zionist national consciousness, this article insisted that the value of assimilation— defined here as the adoption of the attitudes and behaviors of other nations—depended upon its outcome. This definition of assimilation implicitly condoned Betar’s use of the iconography and choreography of Polish patriotic culture, all the while allowing the movement to look upon Tuwim and other “Polonized” Jews with derision. In tandem with the cultural anxieties provoked by their intimate engagement with Polish culture, Revisionists also grew uneasy when faced with government decisions they opposed. Although Revisionist leaders had insisted as early as 1928 that they would not weigh in on debates about Poland’s domestic politics, they did not always express unconditional and unadulterated praise of the Polish government’s policies.143 The mounting anxiety about Poland’s domestic policy towards Jews felt by Revisionist leaders came through in their published response to the government’s new constitution in April 1935. On the one hand, the movement praised the government’s decision to further

141 “Do Juljana Tuwima” Trybuna Narodowa 26 July 1935, p.4. 142 Ibid. 143 D. Lerner, “Unzer landes-politik: onmerkungen” Der Emes 20 November 1928, pp.4-5.

171 limit the power of the parliament and strengthen the authority of the president. Simultaneously, however, they expressed concern that the new election laws would significantly reduce the number of Jews who could fill posts in the parliament. While the article “extended its widest congratulations” for the constitution’s “principle of equality for all its citizens,”144 it added that Jews would only offer their full support for the new constitution if the government fulfilled this principle in practice. They had good reason to be skeptical. For nearly three years, they had witnessed right-wing Polish nationalist parties pushing for increased antisemitic measures against Polish Jews. In the halls of the Polish parliament, ethno-nationalist deputies increasingly urged the government to restrict the political rights of Jews.145 Outside of the Polish parliament, young Jews, particularly those at universities, were among the main targets of widespread and widely popular outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence led by ethno-nationalist Polish youth movements. Many Polish government officials within the Sanacja saw anti-Jewish legislation as the only means of quelling the nationalist riots fomented by the Polish Right. As a movement that claimed that Jews and Poles not only shared common interests but also possessed the same personal qualities, Betar was an inevitable target of antisemitic campaigns. In 1934, a right-wing Polish newspaper accused Betar of being an anti-Polish movement; as proof, they cited articles written by Jabotinsky nearly two decades beforehand, in which he had lacerated Polish nationalists for their antisemitism. His response to these claims, published in the Yiddish-language daily Moment, walked a fine line between maintaining his movement’s praise of the Sanacja and criticizing the behavior of Polish nationalists. On the one hand, he began by providing a detailed history of his tireless devotion to the Polish nation. Recalling how he had taught himself Polish and had learnt chapters of Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz and Konrad Wallenrod by heart, he insisted that in his youth he had “a great, even romantic love for Poland.” He recounted how his empathic writings on Polish nationalism in Russian-language periodicals had led one famous Polish journalist to praise him publicly for his “ability to understand the Polish soul.” Years later, he recalled, he greeted Piłsudski’s coup d’état as

144 “Konstytucja polska z 23 marca” Trybuna Narodowa 29 March 1935. 145 Szymon Rudnicki, “Anti-Jewish Legislation in Interwar Poland” in Robert Blobaum, ed., Antisemitism and its Opponents in Modern Poland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 158.

172 nothing short of a miracle. The article ended, however, by warning Poles that in the eyes of the “civilized world,” many modern-day Polish nationalists were threatening to turn the Polish nation from a people who were “one of the most beautiful symbols of a suffering nation” 146 into a nation loathed for its intolerance. This marked the first time since the rise of the Revisionist movement that Jabotinsky publicly declared that not all iterations of Polish nationalism were worthy of praise. If the meaning of “Polishness” had once encompassed a spectrum of attributes from which Betar could draw, Jabotinsky created a vision of Polskość that presented two starkly opposed modes of believing and behaving—one beautiful, noble, and appealing, the other loathsome and morally repugnant. But it was precisely through Jabotinsky’s description of two Polish nationalisms that Betar members could persist in their performances of Polishness. Echoing similar claims by Polish Jewish leaders and the few members of the Polish intelligentsia who remained sympathetic to Jews, Jabotinsky described Mickiewicz’s inclusive vision of the Polish nation as the original driving force behind Polish national aspirations. By doing so, he allowed Betar members and leaders to envision themselves as both the defenders and ambassadors of an authentic Polish nationalism, rather than as foolish proponents of a vision of Polish-Jewish brotherhood that had could never be realized. Long after an inclusive vision of Polishness had been rejected by the Polish government, Revisionists were still claiming common cause with Warsaw’s Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Foreign Affairs while appealing to them to provide military training to their movement’s members as well as assistance in immigrating to Palestine.147 Just as they remained convinced that the “Polishness” of their movement had the power to influence Polish government officials to support Betar, they continued to believe that the parallels they drew between Polish patriotism and Revisionism would resonate with their members. It was not in spite of their vision of Polish nationalism, but precisely because of it, that Betar felt emboldened to confront the rising acts of antisemitism being perpetrated in the name of Polskość.

146 Jabotinsky, “Fun tog bukh” Der Moment 23 November 1934, p.4. 147 Laurence Weinbaum, A Marriage of Convenience: The New Zionist Organization and the Polish Government, 1936-1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

173 Much like their definitions of what it meant to be a Zionist Polish patriot, Betar’s leaders crafted definitions of “youth” with social and political goals in mind. In the chapter that follows, we examine the attempts of Revisionist leaders to use these definitions to navigate through the dramatic changes that shook Jewish communities across Europe and Mandate Palestine in the early 1930s.

174

CHAPTER FOUR OBEDIENT CHILDREN OR RECKLESS REBELS?

On a winter evening in 1932, Adolf Gourevitch, a young man from Kiev studying at the Sorbonne, joined Vladimir Jabotinsky and his son Eri at a café in Paris. As he sat down at the table, Jabotinsky announced that he would devote the evening to composing a new anthem for Betar. Jabotinsky had good reason to create a new hymn for his youth movement. By this point, Betar had over forty thousand members worldwide and was quickly emerging as one of the most popular Jewish youth movements in Poland, where some thirty-three thousand Jews had joined its ranks. The youth movement was also becoming one of the most controversial in the country—accusations that the group’s members were “Jewish fascists” and “Jewish Endeks” only intensified with Betar’s growth. Writing an anthem provided Jabotinsky with an opportunity to offer a clear declaration of his movement’s goals and to finally put these claims to rest. He even promised Gourevitch that the poem would follow a mathematical logic.1 Jabotinsky wrote the following lines to open his first verse: “Betar / in a pit of rot and decay / in blood and sweat / a new race will emerge / proud, noble and cruel.”2 What did it mean for a young Zionist to be noble and cruel at one and the same time? Why did Jabotinsky present a vision of youth that called upon them to simultaneously perform these seemingly contradictory character traits? And why would he write of the emergence of a new “race” when he had insisted elsewhere that his youth movement’s rhetoric had nothing in common with the increasingly racialized language of Europe’s radical Right?3 Gourevitch explains: Jabotinsky wanted to express three main ideas: that of Betar and of course that of hadar [honour], and something else besides—less gentlemanly, more challenging and rebellious.

1 Adolf Gourevitch, “Jabotinsky and the Hebrew Language” in Joseph Schechtman, The Life and Times of Vladimir Jabotinsky: Fighter and Prophet (Silver Spring, Eshel Books, 1986), p.594. 2 “Shir Betar” Hazit Ha’am 14 (22 March 1932). The term for “decay” (afar with the letter ayin) was also used in the Bible to refer to ashes. 3 While racial categories were widely used by Jewish politicians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, discussions about racial superiority became increasingly associated with Europe’s radical right in the interwar period. See John Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de- Siècle Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Mitchell Hart, Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000); Hart, ed., Jews and Race: Writings on Identity and Difference, 1880-1940 (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2011).

175 “Something mischievous, troublesome, scandalous….Wait, I have it: Betar-hadar- scandar!”

Here Eri looked up in wonderment: “There isn’t any such a thing in any vocabulary! What do you mean by scandar?”

“You don’t get it?” replied Jabotinsky. “Skandal in Russian, in English, scandal, or if you wish—Colonel Patterson’s favorite toast: ‘here’s to trouble!’4

Although Gourevitch’s retrospective account aimed to showcase Jabotinsky’s craftsmanship as a Hebrew poet, it reveals far more about the Revisionist leader as an architect of political ideology. For Jabotinsky, the very dynamism of his youth movement’s ideology rested not in its articulation of a clear vision of who youth were and how they were expected to behave, but rather in its ability to create youth who would provocatively walk the line between democratic and authoritarian, Jewish and “goyish,” obedient and rebellious. Jabotinsky’s conviction that scandal was an essential element of his youth movement’s program also reveals his own assumptions about the political behavior and appetites of the “masses” whom he sought to mobilize. In his view, the rank-and-file of mass political movements cared little about the ideological coherence of political programs, and craved, above all else, something provocative, daring, and dramatic. Much of the value of having young people on the political stage lay, for Jabotinsky, in their ability to make a scene. When one sets Jabotinsky’s calls for a “noble and cruel youth” in the context of the fervent debates sweeping Europe at the time about the nature of youth and their role in modern politics, it becomes tempting to see in his construction of youth a glimmer of the “mathematical logic” he promised Gourevitch. In the interwar period, when political strength was measured in large part through parades, demonstrations and other theatrical rituals in the public sphere, political movements invested even greater importance in the roles that young people could play in politics. Across the continent, political movements poured their energy into creating youth factions and developing an array of programs for young people to attend, from literary evenings and hiking trips to vocational training and religious services. Whether these programs were explicitly political, recreational, or both, their organizers insisted to their young followers that the political fate of their party

4 Gourevitch, “Jabotinsky and the Hebrew Language,” p.594.

176 rested upon their shoulders, and that youth deserved to exert tremendous power in the political arena. At the same time, however, European political leaders spoke of the need to restrain the behavior of youth and prevent them from determining the political destinies of their adult patron organizations.5 The tension between these competing political impulses found expression in interwar newspapers throughout the continent, where two diametrically opposed images of youth emerged: the authoritarian youth who longed to follow the commands of a leader, and the youthful rebel who rejected all forms of authority.6 Whether or not political movements in Europe chose to argue that youth were obedient children or reckless rebels would depend on the specific situation they faced and the political capital they believed could be gained. Ever attentive to popular opinion, Jabotinsky also understood that there were as many political gains to be had by presenting his youth movement’s members as rebels as there were to presenting them as obedient. Like performances of control, discipline and order, his youth movement’s demonstrations of rebellion and recklessness could also provoke the political changes he sought to bring about. If the rapid rise of Betar’s popularity in Poland over the previous four years was any indication, the youth movement’s images of youth, at once provocative, contradictory and elusive, played a pivotal role in helping Jabotinsky mobilize political support. At the same time, however, there was good cause to question whether Jabotinsky’s construction of youth, along with the multiple interpretive possibilities these images presented to his followers, could withstand the political changes sweeping through Europe in the early 1930s. As Betar grew in strength, one feeble democratic government after another had collapsed in Europe, giving way to authoritarian regimes across the continent. Just two weeks before Jabotinsky published his anthem, the Nazi party had received thirty-six percent of the national vote in what would become Weimar Germany’s last direct

5 See especially Tahra Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the battle for children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); Susan B. Whitney, Mobilizing Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); David Pomfret, "Lionised and Toothless: Young People and Urban Politics in Britain and France," European Cities, Youth and the Public Sphere in the Twentieth Century ed. Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried (Ashgate, 2005), 27-42. 6 For examples of uses of the term ‘generational conflict’ in interwar France, Germany, Britain and Italy, see Dieter Dowe, ed. Jugendprotest und Generationenkonflikt in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1986), pp. 113-208.

177 elections. Unlike Mussolini’s Italy, Jews across Europe had good reason to fear the Nazi party’s iteration of fascism, which made antisemitism a cornerstone of its program. The growing link between antisemitism and fascism was immediately put to use by socialist Zionists in their publicity campaigns against Betar. In one typical example, an article published by a Yiddish newspaper in the northeastern city of Pińsk described Betar’s uniforms as “the very same brown shirts of the Hitlerites, whose color recalls boycotts and murders, thousands of broken and ruined lives.”7 The article also illustrated another important shift in the political universe in which the youth movement was operating. The critique of Betar had arrived on the editor’s desk in Pińsk after a lengthy journey from Tel Aviv. After describing German-Jewish refugees watching in horror as five thousand Betar members paraded in the streets of Tel Aviv, the article’s author, himself from Pińsk, pointed out that a large number of the uniformed youth came from Poland. Pleading to his Polish-Jewish readers to stop supporting Betar in Pińsk, he asked, “Do the Pińsk and Polesie youth who strive for work have no other example to follow… [other] than the fascist-revisionist model? Is it possible that these places should send youth [to Palestine] who are led by blind hatred and incapable of constructive work?”8 With information, goods and people flowing faster than ever before between Poland and Palestine, Jabotinsky not only had to contend with opponents claiming that Betar was importing the political radicalism of Europe into Palestine. Transnational politics posed a threat to him from within his ranks as well. Touring Poland in the early 1930s, Revisionist leaders from Palestine were telling Betar members that Jabotinsky’s vision for their youth movement needed to be drastically revised. They insisted that renouncing the movement’s ambivalent, contradictory language in favor of a wholehearted embrace of authoritarianism and revolutionary violence would be the only way to effectively respond to the political crisis facing Jews in both in Europe and Palestine. In London, where the Revisionist party’s central administration was based, Jabotinsky also faced demands to dispense with his provocative political style and articulate a clear program. These calls, however, were to reject authoritarianism and embrace democracy.

7 H. Pinski (pseudonym), “Der eymes” Pinsker shtime 9 June 1933. 8 Ibid.

178 Although these competing factions shared the belief that the changing political landscapes of Europe and Mandate Palestine required Betar to revise its deliberately ambiguous construction of youth, and, in so doing, choose between democratic and authoritarian politics, Jabotinsky remained unconvinced. Conversely, he believed that the concepts of age and generation he had constructed over the past four years would play a crucial role in ensuring that even against the backdrop of the rise of Nazism, the Revisionist party could continue to adopt authoritarian practices while retaining its democratic edifice. Moreover, he insisted that these concepts of youth would not only help the Revisionists retain their supporters in the face of political crisis, but would also bring them even more power and prestige in the Zionist movement. This chapter investigates how it was that Jabotinsky deployed his distinctive brand of “youth politics” to navigate through the rapidly changing political developments of Europe and Mandate Palestine in the early 1930s. It begins by examining what it was about the development of both Betar and the Revisionist movement that convinced Jabotinsky that the authoritarian politics of his youth movement were the key to surviving the political crises facing his party and the Zionist movement at large. It then turns to a series of articles, published by Jabotinsky in Poland’s leading Yiddish newspaper throughout 1932 and 1933, which explored the role of youth in modern politics. It argues that Jabotinsky devoted much of his political prose to discussing who “youth” were and how they were expected to behave in order to convince the Polish Jewish public that his increasingly authoritarian behavior was the only mode of leadership possible for a Zionist leader in the 1930s. The chapter then examines how these articles, along with the innovative ways in which Jabotinsky delimited “youth” from “childhood” and “adulthood” in the Revisionist movement’s regulations, played a crucial role in Jabotinsky’s “putsch” of March 1933—an event that dramatically reduced the democratic components of the Revisionist movement’s structure and operations. Jabotinsky’s use of “youth politics” was not merely an exercise in political rhetoric. In the wake of the “putsch” of March 1933, Betar’s members were offered unprecedented power within the Revisionist movement. The second half of the chapter examines how Jabotinsky, along with his supporters and opponents, spent much of the two years that followed the “putsch” wrestling with the consequences of the “youth

179 politics” he had deployed in 1933. It takes as its focus the attempts of leaders on the Zionist Left and Right to explain the rise in violent clashes between their youth movements. The section highlights how the increasing instances of political violence between young Zionists led Jabotinsky to question the usefulness of an ambiguous discursive system that presented its followers with an array of contradictory interpretive possibilities. The chapter concludes with Jabotinsky’s reflections, midway through the decade, about his youth movement’s tumultuous journey through the increasingly radicalized political landscape of Europe, and whether or not his initial vision for “youth politics” could be the key to the creation of a Jewish state in Mandate Palestine.

Little Dictators and Frail Democrats? Jabotinsky, Betar and the London Revisionist Executive, 1931-1932

As Jabotinsky journeyed through cities and towns across Poland in the late 1920s, he became increasingly convinced that that his efforts to define youth and their role in politics would play a crucial role in providing him power as a Zionist leader. In the early 1930s, developments within the youth movement and the Revisionist movement at large only reinforced this conviction. Ever since Propes had taken the reigns of Betar in Warsaw in 1929, the youth movement’s membership had grown dramatically. By 1930, Betar’s leaders eagerly reported that their movement had grown to twelve thousand members, while the membership of its chief ideological rival, Haszomer Hacair, had shrunk by the thousands.9 Three years later, Betar’s Head Command reported that the number of young Jews in Betar uniforms had soared to well over thirty-three thousand, and that the movement was operating in six hundred and fifty locations throughout the country.10 The exponential growth of Betar clubs was just one way in which local youth movement leaders could boast to Jabotinsky of their growing power in Poland. Betar’s press often reported that the youth movement’s members were among the chief generators of revenue for the , the Zionist Organization’s chief

9 “Bericht Des Mifkada-Eljona des Brith Trumpeldor an die IV. Weltkonferenz der Union der Zionisten- Revisionisten 1929-August 1930,” JI/B1/3-3. 10 Isaac Remba, ed. Shnatayim: Din ve-heshbon shel netsivut Betar be-polanya (Warsaw: Futura, 1934), p.3.

180 fundraising organ.11 Much more compelling to Jabotinsky was the success the movement was enjoying in fulfilling its educational goals. After a decade of calling for the military training of Jewish youth, Jabotinsky could now boast that Betar leaders—in tandem with Polish government officials—were training thousands of Betar youth in the art of combat. In Zionist and Polish patriotic celebrations across the country, Betar members were marching in military formation, at times, with weapons in hand. Equally significant was the fact that the Jewish public was taking notice. Whether Jewish journalists praised or condemned Betar’s activity, local and national newspapers frequently mentioned Betar’s performances of power, whether in parades, at conferences, or in the street. To reinforce the positive assessments of the youth movement circulating in the Polish Jewish press, Jabotinsky could sing the praises of Betar youth in his bi- weekly column in Haynt, Poland’s leading Yiddish newspaper.12 No less important to Jabotinsky’s perception of power through youth politics were the messages of success that were being conveyed back to him. From handwritten village journals to nationally circulated periodicals, Betar members fed Jabotinsky a steady diet of articles praising him as an omnipotent leader who had transformed their lives and would determine their destiny, along with the fate of Jews worldwide. The narrative arc of these articles was nearly always the same. As Propes put it in an essay written on the occasion of Jabotinsky’s birthday, Jews had been destined for misery, “but when he came along…he ignited a fire within us, he gave our lives meaning.” Addressing Jabotinsky directly, he insisted, “Our only desire is to be led by you for years and years to come.”13 These pledges of obedience were repeated, time and again, in telegrams sent to Jabotinsky during the numerous local and national conferences that took place throughout the year.14 While Jabotinsky may have publicly evinced discomfort with the authoritarian tone of the

11 Ibid., p.14. See also “Ershter reshime fun di gezamlte gelter, vos unzere kenim hot gezamlt far ‘keren kayemet le-israel’ farn letstn halbn yor” Tel Chaj June-July 1930, pp.17-18; “Ha-mo’atza shel merkazei histadruyot-hano’ar le-ma’an ha-keren ha-kayemet le-israel” Tel Chaj July 1931, p.15. 12 See, for example, Jabotinsky, “Shatnez lo ya’ale alekha” Haynt 18 January 1929; “Vegn militarizm” Haynt 25 January 1929; “Ven di velt iz yung geven” Haynt 23 January 1931; “Oyfn pripetchik” Haynt 16 October 1931. 13 Propes, “Unzer firer” Tel Hai October 1930, p. 3. 14 See, for example, telegrams addressed to Jabotinsky between October and November 1930, JI/A1/3/18- 3.

181 platitudes showered upon him, the youth movement was providing him compelling evidence that they were the key to his political success. The same could not be said of the democratic clubs the Revisionist movement had designated for its “adult” membership. Initially, the clubs had proven indispensable to Jabotinsky. When faced with accusations that they endorsed authoritarianism, Revisionist leaders could call attention to the fact that their clubs consisted of elected delegates, their conferences encouraged a free exchange of ideas, and that their movement as a whole participated in the democratic elections and proceedings of the Zionist Organization.15 At the same time, however, the Revisionist councils were not delivering the type of success that Jabotinsky had hoped they would. In comparison with Betar’s meteoric ascent, Revisionist clubs drew only scant support. By 1930, Propes was boasting in Betar’s national journal that the youth movement constituted eighty percent of the Revisionist movement as a whole.16 Reuwen Feldszu, who had preceded Propes as Betar’s Head Commander, summed up the state of the movement one year later by writing to a fellow Revisionist abroad that “Poland has a powerful Betar, a strong Revisionist spirit and an entirely awful Revisionist Organization.”17 For some Revisionist council leaders, particularly those who insisted that the Revisionist movement endorsed democratic politics, the implications of this imbalance of power were unsettling. In the same letter, Feldszu not only complained about Propes’ total lack of deference to him, but also warned that Propes was increasingly behaving like a dictator, threatening to demote Revisionist leaders if they disagreed with him. Moshe Lejzerowicz, too, began to complain about Propes’ behavior as the Head Commander of Betar. Central committee meetings, he recalled, would end in clashes between Propes and the Revisionist Council leaders. According to Lejzeworicz, even the calm, soft spoken Ya’akov Kahan, Jabotinsky’s first official Revisionist representative in Poland, would spring up from his seat and scream out, “We must tame and isolate them!” Suggesting that Betar and the

15 See, for example, M.Grossman, “Mir un di tsionistisher organizatsye” Der nayer veg 15 May 1932, p.1; “Di valn tsu der velt-konferentz” Der nayer veg 15 July 1932; M. Grossman, “A kurtser sakh hakol” Der nayer veg 10 September 1932, p.2; Jabotinsky, “Tshuva le-‘sotsialistitchski vestnik’” Ha-Yarden 3 October 1934. 16 Propes, “Brit hatsohar un betar” Tel Chaj 7 (9) August 1930, p.4. 17 Feldszu to Grossman 11 February 1931, JI/P59/2/89/15. See also Lipman to Revisionist London Executive 26 November 1931, JI/G2/5/38.

182 Revisionist movement promoted conflicting political programs, he added, “Propes may be giving commands with Revisionist content—just not the type of Revisionism we want.”18 Whose Revisionism, then, was it? While Propes may have indeed been behaving, as Lejzerowicz claimed, like a little dictator, his commands were often not his own. Propes was, ultimately, responsible to Jabotinsky, and was entrusted with carrying out his orders. Embedded within Lejzerowicz’s letter about Propes was a coded critique of Jabotinsky’s use of Betar’s Head Commander to overstep the authority of the Revisionist council. The recipients of Lejzerowicz’s letter—the chief administrators of Revisionist councils worldwide—not only undoubtedly read between the lines, but also shared in Lejzerowicz’s concerns about Jabotinsky’s behavior. Comprised of four to five Revisionist activists in London, and spearheaded by Jabotinsky’s longtime collaborator, the journalist Meir Grossman, the Revisionist Executive had good reason to be concerned. While members of the Revisionist Executive in London had been among Jabotinsky’s earliest supporters, they were increasingly uneasy about the authoritarian behavior of their leader, especially when it came to bypassing their own opinions about the directions the Revisionist movement would take.19 Jabotinsky, too, felt that there was a widening schism between himself and the London Revisionist Executive. At the heart of the conflict between them was the issue of the Revisionist movement’s relationship to the Zionist Organization, the political organization towards which the majority of Zionist factions looked for guidance and institutional support. With Jabotinsky barred entry to Palestine, the Revisionist Executive believed that maintaining the movement’s ties with the Zionist Organization would preserve their ability to influence British policy as well as the social and economic development of Jewish life in Palestine. Remaining in the Zionist Organization, and participating in the democratic elections to its bi-annual congress, also allowed them to

18 Undated letter from Lejzerowicz in a collection of letters sent to the Central Revisionist Office in Paris between 1925-1929, G1/9. 19 See, for example, M.Grossman, “A kurtzer sakh ha-kol” Der Nayer Veg 10 September 1932, pp.1-2; “Derefnungs rede” Ibid., pp.7-9.

183 continue to insist that the Revisionist movement nurtured democracy among its members.20 While the Revisionist Executive insisted that the Zionist Organization was the key to power, Jabotinsky became increasingly convinced that the organization was corrupt and politically impotent, and began to argue both privately and publicly that the Revisionist movement was wasting its time by endorsing the organization. In Jabotinsky’s view, the Revisionist movement’s fate at the Seventeenth Zionist Congress, held in Basel in 1931, offered conclusive proof of his convictions. If the success of his youth movement gestured towards the potential benefits of authoritarianism, the Congress highlighted for him the pitfalls of parliamentary politics. At first, it seemed as though the Revisionist delegates might leave a lasting impact on the Congress. While the Congress elections two years beforehand had brought Revisionists only eighteen thousand votes, they arrived in Basel with nearly fifty-six thousand supporters—nearly a quarter of all votes cast.21 As a result, they were allowed to bring three times more delegates than they had to the previous Congress. Newspapers covering the two-week proceedings reported that the Revisionist party might emerge as the leading force of the Zionist movement.22 By that time, Chaim Weizmann, the Organization’s president for more than a decade, faced growing criticism from many Zionists for his perceived subservience to the British government. The enthusiasm that Zionists had expressed towards the British government upon issuing the in 1917 had all but disappeared; the government’s increasingly sharp critiques of the Zionist movement, coupled with the narrowing quotas it imposed upon Jewish immigration from the late 1920s onwards did little to bolster support for Britain among Zionist activists. Discouraged by the critiques of his interactions with British officials, Weizmann announced in a newspaper interview midway through the 1931 congress that he would not re-submit his candidacy for the presidency of the organization. As if to signal that Jabotinsky would be an appropriate successor, he added that the Revisionist leader was “a

20 See, for example, M. Grossman, “Geferlekhe shtimungen” Der emes 20 November 1928, pp.8-9; Grossman, “Mir un di tsionistishe organizatsye” Der nayer veg 15 May 1932, pp.4-6. 21 Ya’akov Shavit, Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement 1925-1948 (New York: Frank Cass & Co., 1988), p.37. 22 See, for example, “Polityka Weizmana czy nowy kurz Żabotyńskiego?” Nasz Przegląd 5 July 1931; “Ani ma’amin Żabotyńskiego” Chwila 8 July 1931.

184 man of ability and quality” and that there were “many others in the congress who lean towards the Revisionist’s views but who do not have the courage openly to confess Revisionism.”23 Almost immediately, Weizmann’s comments were interpreted by onlookers as an indication that the Revisionist leader’s accession to the presidency was imminent. The Revisionist Executive saw this as their potential moment of triumph, and insisted that Jabotinsky forge a bloc with several other Zionist factions who opposed Labor Zionist policy. Despite the inevitable compromises to Revisionist doctrine that would have to take place, the coalition would allow Jabotinsky to take hold of the presidency. To the shock of many, Jabotinsky refused to do so. His choice remains as much a mystery to historians today as it did to his contemporaries; neither his private correspondence nor public statements following the Congress bother to explain his decision. Buoyed by the publicity that anticipated his victory at the Congress, Jabotinsky may have believed that the Revisionists could sweep into power alone. But it is equally plausible that his conviction that the Zionist Organization was useless led him to deliberately his chance to rise to power within it. No matter the motive, Jabotinsky’s decision proved fatal to the Revisionist movement’s success at the congress. His party left Basel with only a meager share of power in the Zionist Organization. The new executive elected by Congress delegates consisted largely of people who had previously supported Weizmann’s policies. Particularly humiliating for the party was the crushing defeat of Jabotinsky’s proposal to define the aim of the Zionist movement as a Jewish state with a Jewish majority. Fearing that such a proclamation would incense the British government and Palestine’s Arab population, the majority of the Congress’ delegates refused to even permit the resolution to be put to a vote. Infuriated by the failure of his proposal, Jabotinsky rose up from his seat and declared “This is no longer a Zionist Congress.” He then tore up his membership card to the Zionist Organization, and stormed out of the hall.24 Equally significant was his reaction to his own Executive.

23 “Saying he doesn’t represent views of congress, Weizmann repeats he isn’t Candidate” Jewish Telegraphic Agency 3 July 1931. Retrieved from JTA Jewish News Archive, http://archive.jta.org/article/1931/07/06/2790125/saying-he-doesnt-represent-views-of-congress-weizmann- repeats-he-isnt-candidate. 24 “Revisionists Return to Congress after Quitting Amidst Uproar” Jewish Telegraphic Agency 13 July 1931, retrieved from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Archive, http://archive.jta.org/article/1931/07/14/2791224.

185 Almost immediately after storming out of the hall, he announced that he was taking a six- month hiatus from leading the Revisionist movement, on account of the Revisionist Executive’s insistence that the movement remain within the Zionist Organization.25 Jabotinsky’s dramatic exit from Zionist parliamentary politics, coupled with his temporary abdication of his role as leader of the Revisionist organization for several months, was just the publicity stunt that he needed to push the Revisionist Executive to agree to revise its position on the Zionist Organization. In a meeting conducted several weeks later in the French seaport town of Calais, they agreed that the Revisionist movement was in principle no longer obligated to follow the instructions of the Zionist Organization.26 In a bid to both placate the Revisionist Executive and present himself as a leader capable of compromise, Jabotinsky accepted that individual members of the Revisionist movement could simultaneously hold membership to the Zionist Organization. The process of reaching the agreement infuriated Jabotinsky; privately, he confessed to a Revisionist leader in Palestine that he was “sick of this tradition of patience and compromise….I feel as if our masses, without even knowing, long secretly in their souls for some sort of explosion, a spark of a tempest…”27 Whatever form this storm would take, it was clear to Jabotinsky that neither the “adult” Revisionist Councils nor the parliamentary politics they pursued through the Zionist Organization would bring it about.

Wild Things? Jabotinsky and the “Covenant of Hooligans” (Brit Ha- Biryonim), 1931-1932

It was far from a coincidence that Jabotinsky chose to both vent his frustrations about the Revisionist Executive and indulge in revolutionary rhetoric with a member of Palestine’s Revisionist party. By 1931, Revisionist leaders in Palestine were sending letters to both the London Executive and Jabotinsky, urging them to adopt a more radical

25 “Split in Revisionist Party as Jabotinsky Takes Six Months Leave of Absence” Jewish Telegraphic Agency 17 July 1931, retrieved from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Archive archive.jta.org/article/1931/07/19/2791288/. 26 See Jan Zouplna’s detailed analysis of the text of the Calais Agreement in “Vladimir Jabotinsky and the Split within the Revisionist Union: From the Boulogne Agreement to the Katowice Putsch” The Journal of Israeli History 24 (January 2005), pp.35-63. 27 Jabotinsky to Eliyahu Ben Horin, 17 September 1931.

186 approach to political action.28 Spearheading the campaign to further radicalize the Revisionist movement were the journalists and poets Abba Achimeir, Uri Zvi Grinberg and Yehoshua H. Yeivin. Known for the violent and revolutionary rhetoric that had previously typified their poetry and articles in Labor Zionist journals before they became Revisionists, these men founded a Revisionist faction called the Brit Habiryonim—the Covenant of Hooligans—in late October 1931. Promoting their views in Palestine’s Revisionist journal Hazit Ha’am (The Nation’s Frontline), the biryonim’s slogan was “to invigorate the movement in spirit and blood; to replace the oppositionary means by revolutionary means, action instead of talk.”29 With Abba Achimeir at their helm, they insisted that fascist rule and acts of violent radicalism against the British were the only means by which the Jewish state could be established. While their message was forged in Palestine, they, like Jabotinsky, believed that courting the support of young Jews in Poland would be crucial to determining their success. Initially, the biryonim, also known as the Maximalists, mailed their articles to Betar’s journals in Poland.30 A lecture tour in 1932 throughout Poland by Abba Achimeir, in which he extolled the virtues of revolutionary violence, brought increased visibility to the group.31 By 1933, , already a celebrated Hebrew poet in both Poland and Palestine, moved to Warsaw to take over the editorial board of the Revisionist party’s weekly Yiddish- language journal, Di Velt. Although calls for violence, revolution and national interest over universal moral principles previously appeared in texts published by Betar’s press in Poland, the fact that the biryonim had lived or were living in Palestine gave their calls a credibility and popularity that surpassed Polish Jewish activists with similar worldviews. The biryonim also differed from Polish Jewish Betar activists in one other crucial respect. The editors of Poland’s Betar publications opted to follow in Jabotinsky’s footsteps by

28 See, for example, Wolfgang von Weisl to Jabotinsky 20 January 1927, JI/A1/3/15; Wolfgang von Weisl to Jabotinsky, 14 January 1928, JI/A1/3/16; Abba Achimeir to Jabotinsky 17 October 1928 and 25 October 1928, JI/A1/3/16; Wolfgang von Weisl, 17 January 1931, JI/A1/3/19. 29 Hazit Ha’am 9 August 1932. 30 See, for example, Abba Achimeir, “Ha-se’ir le-azazel” Tel Chaj 1 December 1929 p.6; “” Tel Chaj July 1930, p.10; Achimeir, “Al regel achat” Madrikh Betar September 1932, pp.3-4; Uri Zvi Grinberg, “Uri Zvi Grinberg medaber” Ha-Medina February 1932, p.5 31 See, for example, an ad for an Achimeir lecture in Baranovitsher vokh 28 October 1932. The talk was entitled “Where is the Road to our Victory?” Its promoters promised a lecture devoted to “giving an historical overview of national revolution among Jews.”

187 providing a set of articles that, taken together, embraced a range of views regarding radicalism. In contrast, the biryonim saw little value in innuendo and ambiguity, and did not mince words; their calls for violence and dictatorship were clear and consistent. The biryonim’s increasing popularity within his youth movement both exhilarated and alarmed Jabotinsky. With the Congress conflict with the Revisionist Executive still fresh on his mind, the biryonim’s call to increase Jabotinsky’s power would have likely seemed both flattering and enticing. He was, however, deeply uneasy about the messages they were promoting. As early as 1929, he had confided to a colleague that he considered Aba Achimeir to be a crass, untalented author.32 One could hear echoes of this assessment in Jabotinsky’s appraisal of the biryonim’s political tactics.33 There was something repulsive to Jabotinsky about the blunt nature of their calls for dictatorship and violence. Prior to the Maximalists’ rise, Jabotinsky did not object on any ideological grounds to acts of radicalism, so long as he could decide to amplify or dim the movement’s radical tendencies. As such, he viewed the clear message that the Maximalists were delivering— leaving little room for imagination or interpretation—as a threat to his power. Further fuelling this suspicion was the Maximalist demand that the Revisionist movement establish a semi-autonomous action wing in Palestine that could conduct acts of terrorism. Already struggling with the Revisionist Executive’s vocal opposition to him, Jabotinsky feared that the Maximalists would similarly attempt to diminish his ability to determine how his followers would behave. In a letter sent to one of the biryonim leaders in August 1932 on the eve of the Second World Conference of the Revisionist movement, Jabotinsky wrote that “your [the group’s] attempts to make your views prevail…are nothing but attempts to drive me out,” making clear that Jabotinsky’s concerns were as much driven by his fear of being displaced as they were his by his ideological inclinations.34 Particularly worrisome for Jabotinsky were the ways in which the biryonim claimed to speak in the name of “youth”—a claim that, until that point, had been reserved in the movement for Jabotinsky alone. The Maximalist’s use of the term “hooligan”

32 Jabotinsky to Meir Grossman 30 May 1929. 33 See Jabotinsky, “Vegn Avanturizm” Haynt 26 February 1932; “Vayter vegn avanturizm” Haynt 29 July 1932. 34 Jabotinsky to Y.H. Yeivin 9 August 1932.

188 [biryon] in their name betrayed their strategy to place youth front and center in their program, and, in so doing, convince Betar members that the new group exuded a youthful sensibility. At the Second World Conference, held in 1932 at the Renz Circus in Vienna, Abba Achimeir had defended the Maximalist call for authoritarianism and violence, explaining that “the twentieth century belongs to two things: youth and dictatorship.”35 Supporters of the biryonim among Betar’s leadership in Poland began to echo Achimeir’s claim that their ethos best exemplified the desires of young Jews. They lauded the acts of civil disobedience undertaken by Betar youth in Mandate Palestine. Typical was an article published in Betar’s national journal several months after the Vienna conference, entitled “The Sons of Betar and the Reality in the Homeland.” The article began by noting that youth naturally strove to “renounce words in the name of deeds.” It then proceeded to praise Jewish youth in Palestine who were “prepared to break laws” in the name of Zionism; “imprisonment,” it concluded, would “become the membership card for [belonging to] the national youth.”36 Even those within Betar who were less than enthusiastic about the biryonim linked the new group’s platform to ideas about the nature of youth. When explaining the biryonim’s appeal, an article that criticized the group noted that “in every moment there are always people, mostly youth, who excel with their special volatile temperament and with their great source of energy… always unhappy with the reality… possessed by a strong longing for deeds.”37 An article offering total support to the biryonim in the same newspaper argued that because “youth possess a great energy” they could not follow in the footsteps of “salon Revisionists.” Their task, instead, was to ensure that the British knew, “every strike of the fist we answer with the strike of the fist, every decree we answer with the deed.”38 While the article nicely captures the type of uninhibited calls for violence that troubled Jabotinsky, it also highlights what it was that tempted the Revisionist leader to harness rather than repress the biryonim’s popularity. According to the article’s author, “salon Revisionists” were not merely those who abhorred acts of violence; those who

35 “Tsveyte zitsung fun der velt konferentz” Der nayer veg vol.8 10 September 1932, p.11. Interestingly, the article omits Achimeir’s reference to Oswald Moseley, the British Fascist leader, to whom Achimeir attributes this phrase See “Generaldebatte 30 August 1932” JI/G2/7/4/3. 36 Alexander Aker, “B’nei Betar ve-hametziut ba-” Madrikh Betar vol. 3, January 1933, pp.15-17. 37 “Vegn Aktivizm” Ha-Medina 2 April 1933, p.4. 38 Tuvia Techlin, “Tsum aktivizm” Ha-Medina 19 March 1933, p.4.

189 longed to remain in the Zionist Organization also fell within their ranks. By linking their call to arms against the British with Jabotinsky’s critiques of the Zionist Organization and Revisionist Executive, the sympathizers of the biryonim presented themselves as crucial allies to Jabotinsky. The rising frequency of biryon-inspired articles in Betar’s periodicals, as well as the increasing demand of local Betar units in Poland to import the Palestine-based Hazit Ha’am magazine would have provided ample evidence to Jabotinsky that such an alliance could prove beneficial to him. Yet as much as Jabotinsky was fed up with the Zionist Organization’s parliamentary politics and the Revisionist Executive’s behavior, he refused to give up on describing himself as a democratic leader who was committed to the principles of parliamentary politics. Taking the podium at the conference in Vienna, where Achimeir had just declared that the twentieth century belonged to youth and dictatorship, Jabotinsky insisted that as a man “from the nineteenth century,” he was “unconditionally loyal to the democratic form of the [Revisionist] organization.”39 His declaration was not simply an attempt to placate members of the audience who believed that Jabotinsky was the consummate democrat. Even if, in practice, Jabotinsky found democratic politics to be paralyzing, the notion of proclaiming himself as a dictator struck him, above and beyond all else, as crass. How, then, could Jabotinsky harness the power of the biryonim’s popularity to weaken the Revisionist Executive, while retaining his democratic persona and ensuring that the movement did not entirely reject non-violent political practices? The answer lay in the very tactics that both the Revisionist Executive and the biryonim had employed in their quests for power. While the Revisionist Executive and the biryonim presented radically different challenges to Jabotinsky, they shared one crucial feature. For both, Revisionist youth were essential. One of the chief ways in which the Revisionist Executive thought it could retain whatever power it still exerted was to diminish Betar’s influence throughout Poland. Over the course of 1932 and 1933, they published articles that suggested including Revisionist council representatives on Betar councils. They even proposed breaking up Betar into smaller, subsidiary groups,

39 “Jabotinsky’s rede nokh der general debate” Der nayer veg vol. 9 [no date legible], p.9.

190 including those that would trade militarism for democratic council politics.40 Whenever Jabotinsky heard their demands to reduce the power of Betar, the biryonim’s calls to embrace an authoritarian cult of youth were always within earshot. Paying heed to these tactics, Jabotinsky realized that in order to diminish the power of both the biryonim and the London Revisionist Executive, and all the while fend off accusations that he was embracing authoritarian politics, he would have to place his own ideas about who youth were and how they were expected to behave at the center of his political prose. Doing so would not only allow Jabotinsky to weigh in on the debates about the future of youth being fought among his ranks. It would also allow him to embed his case for further authoritarian measures within an already vigorous conversation among Polish Jews and Europeans at large about the nature of youth and their relationship to their elders. By the 1930s, the notion of a “conflict of generations,” in which Europe’s young challenged the worldview of their elders, pervaded European intellectual, political and popular discourse.41 No matter how different their images of youth were, politicians across the political spectrum agreed that talking about youth and generations was a powerful way to command public attention and shape public opinion.42 Whether or not youth were praised or condemned for the attitudes and behaviors attributed to them depended on the social, political and economic ends they sought to achieve. The meaning of the term “generation” was similarly dynamic; the boundaries of who belonged to a generational cohort, as well the characteristics they purportedly embodied often depended upon the political program of those who were employing the term. In Jabotinsky’s case, the images of youth and generational conflict he needed to employ would have to allow

40 M. Gantsnberg, “Di betsiyung tsvishn betar un brith ha-tsohar” Der nayer veg vol. 7 [no date legible], 1932, p.18; M. Grossman, “Unzer hov tsu der revizionistisher yugnt” Der nayer veg 27 November 1932, p.4. 41 For examples of uses of the term “generational conflict” in interwar France, Germany, Britain and Italy, see Dieter Dowe, ed. Jugendprotest und Generationenkonflikt in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert, pp. 113-208. On “generational cohorts” as a social construct, see Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); Richard Bessel, “The ‘Front Generation’ and the Politics of Weimar Germany” in Mark Roseman, ed. Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany, 1770-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) pp. 121-136. For a collection of articles from the interwar period theorizing the existence of generational cohorts and the conflict of generations, see Anthony Esler, ed., The Youth Revolution: The Conflict of Generations in Modern History (Lexington: Heath, 1974). 42 See especially Tahra Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004) and Susan B. Whitney, Mobilizing Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).

191 him to maneuver between his claims for more power and his insistence that he remained a democrat. True to form, Jabotinsky decided that in order to tighten his hold on both the biryonim and the London Revisionist Executive, he would have to constantly turn his readers’ attention to a “youth” who provocatively walked the line between obedience and rebellion.

“A Generation of Realists”: Youth Politics and the Case for Authoritarianism, 1932- 1933

In the months between the winter of 1932 and the spring of 1933, Jabotinsky put into motion his youth-centered campaign for the Revisionist movement to further embrace authoritarianism. Whether in articles that aimed to quell his fears of being eclipsed by the biryonim, in letters to the British government making a case for the relevancy of his movement, or in newspaper columns designed to undermine the Revisionist Executive, Jabotinsky’s image of Jewish youth as “obedient rebels” took center stage. One of the first advantages Jabotinsky believed he possessed by describing youth as obedient rebels was the ability to capture the attention of the British government and public, and, in so doing, make a case to his supporters that the Revisionist movement could influence British policy without the Zionist Organization. While the biryonim’s call for insurrectionary activity against the British deeply concerned Jabotinsky, he simultaneously entertained the possibility that these threats could persuade the British government to see the Revisionist movement as a force to be reckoned with. Rather than merely demand that the British government express outrage over the persecution of Jews in much of Europe, as he had done in the past with letters to the editors of major British newspapers, Jabotinsky began to warn the British public of the threat Jewish youth would pose to the British government should it remain deaf to the demands of the Zionist movement. In January 1932, Jabotinsky wrote to the London Times, “The Mandatory has become an unmitigated hindrance to any progress of Zionism. This realization threatens to drive the Jewish masses, especially the youth, along a very dangerous road. The youth of a people faced with such a plight as ours cannot live without…faith either in a great

192 restoration or in a great destruction.”43 What made Jabotinsky’s veiled threat powerful was not only its description of Jewish youth on the verge of committing violent crimes, but also its subtle insistence that they were simultaneously obedient to Jabotinsky’s will. This point was driven home in the remainder of the letter, in which Jabotinsky assured readers of the Times that he would encourage Jews to have faith in the British public and admire the British government. The message of the article was clear: so long as the British government complied to the demands of the Revisionist movement, Jabotinsky would be able to prevent Jewish youth from committing acts of insurrectionary violence. When addressing his Jewish readership in Poland, Jabotinsky similarly depicted himself as the only capable intermediary between volatile Jewish youth and adults. This approach was best captured in his first published response to the biryonim—an article entitled “On Adventurism,” published in the winter of 1932 in Haynt, and republished one year later in the youth movement’s first ideological anthology.44 He began by describing “adventurism” as an activity “which all serious people hate, that only youth dream about,” and added that he was a staunch defender of youth who engaged in these acts. By describing radical activity as the preserve of youth, Jabotinsky could at once endorse political extremism without having to claim that he himself held these beliefs. Echoing the strategy he used to define democracy, militarism and authoritarianism, he cast as wide a net as possible to describe the nature of “adventurism.” While the bulk of the article described non-violent acts, such as the illegal immigration of youth to Palestine, he also described murdering one’s opponents as an “adventurist” act. The example he gave made clear that this was not merely one example among many. Jabotinsky turned to the narrative, focusing on the decisive moment in which Moses—still an Egyptian prince—decides for the first time to expresses solidarity with the enslaved Israelites. He did so by murdering an Egyptian who was beating a Jew. Reflecting on the moment in which a Jewish slave confronts Moses about the murder, Jabotinsky wrote, “There is no doubt that the Jew who sought to criticize our teacher Moses [Moshe Rabeinu] for murdering the policeman in Egypt also said to him, “you are an adventurist!” To blur the definition of adventurism even further, he added that only the

43 Jabotinsky, Letter to the Editor of the Times, 8 January 1932. 44 Zamlbukh far betarisher yugend (Warsaw: 1933), pp.32-40.

193 outcome of “adventurist” acts could determine whether they were reckless or reasonable. It was precisely because the definition of adventurism was so vague, Jabotinsky concluded, that he alone could determine when such acts were permissible. Addressing his readers directly, he wrote, “I must reserve the right to determine when it is appropriate to address a person with the phrase: adventurist!”45 By casting youth as volatile, framing adventurism in ambiguous terms, and presenting himself as the only leader capable of determining the actions of young Jews, Jabotinsky was implicitly making a case to his readers that he needed to adopt an authoritarian leadership style. “On Adventurism” was not merely designed to show the biryonim and their supporters that political radicalism was only one of many options available to the movement. Nor was it simply intended to remind them that Jabotinsky alone would determine the movement’s course. The article’s arguments linking the nature of youth and authoritarian politics were also a crucial component of Jabotinsky’s plan to wrest power from the London Revisionist Executive without abandoning his democratic persona. In tandem with ideas about the “obedient rebel,” the notion of generational conflict became a central feature of Jabotinsky’s campaign to bolster his power within the Revisionist movement. In the fall of 1932, when Jabotinsky began to publish a series of articles that questioned the effectiveness of democracy, descriptions of generational conflict were ubiquitous. By depicting himself as the leader of a generation with fundamentally different worldviews and experiences, he could claim that while he remained a democrat to his core, his ideological preferences had no practical use in the world in which his followers were coming of age. The first of such articles appeared in Haynt in August 1932, immediately following the Second World Revisionist Conference, where Achimeir had called for him to assume the role of a dictator. Rebuking Achimeir, Jabotinsky insisted to his followers, “in my life I’ve never given any ‘commands’ to a person—I don’t even know how someone does so.” He followed, however, by cautioning them, “It is [also] true that there can be periods of exceptional situations, periods of social sickness, when one needs, at times, to use exceptional means: but one cannot… make out of exceptional cases a rule to be followed by every generation.”46 Embedded within this

45 Jabotinsky, “Vegn avanturizm” Haynt 26 February 1932. 46 Jabotinsky, “Prakim fun a rede” Haynt 9 September 1932.

194 statement was an argument that would be repeated for months to come: while dictatorship was not a timeless ideal, it could serve as a “rule” for a generation coming of age in an era of crisis. Jabotinsky had gestured towards this argument in an article published in the Polish-Jewish daily months beforehand. The article described Jabotinsky’s attempt to intervene in a conversation taking place at a café in Paris between young Jewish men who were extolling the virtues of violence and dictatorship. Jabotinsky recounted that when he declared his generation fought for democracy, one of the young men responded, “My dear sir, it truly pains us that we have to so crudely destroy the laughable concept that men from your generation deluded themselves into thinking about regarding the phenomenon of “youth.” We belong to a world that is far older than the world in which you were raised. We have seen too many terrible things.” Through the voices of these young men, Jabotinsky went on to describe how the democratic ideals of the “older” generation had only brought despair to the Jews of 1930s Europe. In one such passage, the imagined youth quipped, “The elements of your youth rule in every country today….[including] the principle of responsible government with general voting (even the women), which your generation thought would surely bring redemption. You believed that redemption rested with the masses. Well, here are your folk-masses, ruling. And they’re voting for Hitler.”47 As if to point out that these young men’s faith in dictatorship and violence was justified, Jabotinsky entitled the article, “A Generation of Realists.” The title of another article published in October 1932, “Grandfather Liberalism,” opening with the observation that “the old one has long been dead and buried, ” similarly underscored the inability of “old” liberal values—including parliamentarism—to respond to needs of the “new” generation of youth in Europe— including young European Jews.48 By simultaneously articulating these ideas about youth, generationhood, parliamentarism and dictatorship in the autumn months of 1932, Jabotinsky could insist that he had no choice but to adopt increasingly authoritarian measures.

47 Jabotinsky, “A dor realistn” Haynt 19 February 1932. 48 “Zeyde liberalism” Haynt 14 October 1932.

195 While Jabotinsky saw great value in using his journalistic talent to make the case for authoritarianism, he also deftly used the regulations of both Betar and the Revisionist councils to provide him with the ability to take authoritarian action while maintaining his democratic persona. Here too, ideas about youth proved decisive. If Jabotinsky’s strategy in his prose was to emphasize the differences between “youth” and “adults,” the movement’s regulations, crafted largely by Jabotinsky, did precisely the opposite. In what came to be known as the “Gentleman’s Agreement,” regulations concerning the age range of Betar’s membership were proposed first by Jabotinsky at the Fourth World Revisionist Conference in Prague in 1930. They stipulated that once Betar members reached the age of eighteen, they had to become members of the Revisionist movement, and were subject to its authority. At the same time, however, these newly-minted Revisionists were permitted to remain in Betar as a “reserve” and were expected, if called to do so, to obey the commands of the youth movement’s authorities. Above all, it was what was left out of the agreement that proved its most crucial feature: no age cap was placed upon Betar’s membership. Thus, Revisionist members, while participating in a democratic organization with Jabotinsky serving as its president, could, as Betar “youth,” be subject to the commands of Betar’s head commander—also Jabotinsky—at any point.49 The agreement would have been of little import, were it not for the fact that the vast majority of Betar’s membership were either nearing or just beyond the age of eighteen. By the time the agreement was drafted, Jabotinsky would have seen the extensive census data collected by the youth movement’s clubs across Europe that very year. Among the many details provided by the census, including the gender, education level and occupation of the movement’s members, it also pointed out that the majority of Betar members in Poland were between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two. Several Betar branches listed members as old as thirty.50 Two years later, Betar leaders in Eastern Galicia reported that fifty-six percent of its members were above the age of eighteen.51 The age distribution of the youth movement provided Betar with genuine power within

49 Brit trumpeldor: hartsa’ot, vikuhim ve-hahlatot, pp.71-72. 50 “Sha’ snif polanya 1930” JI/B1-10. 51 Avodatenu: din ve-heshbon shel mifkedet ha-galil le-betar le-polanya ha-ktana ha-mizrahit be-lvov (Lwów: 1935), pp.17, 19.

196 the elections and conferences held by the Revisionist councils. Underscoring how the very distinction between the Revisionist movement and Betar was far from clear, Propes assured Betar members at several points in the early 1930s that the sheer number of the youth movement’s members ensured that they would comprise the majority at national Revisionist conferences.52 For Revisionist leaders who insisted that the movement retain its democratic components, the implications of Betar’s dominance within the Revisionist membership were grave. Distress letters sent by loyalists of the Revisionist Executive in London in the wake of the Gentleman’s Agreement capture these fears. Writing from Lwów, a Revisionist activist by the name of Jakób Rothmann urged the movement to dissolve the Gentleman’s Agreement, and either eliminate Betar altogether from Revisionist politics, or expect the movement to become fully militarized. By permitting Betar members to vote as Revisionists, he argued, the Revisionist organization had created a “youth phalanx” that would undermine the movement’s democratic foundations. Alluding to similar developments elsewhere in Europe, Rothmann warned, “the ‘dualism’ of military- civilian organizations has never brought about good results in any location. Commands and politics, soldierly obedience and factual reasoning, discipline and parliamentarism never get along.”53 The term “youth phalanx,” as well as the subtle reference to other European political movements, pointed to an awareness that the Revisionist movement was mirroring a process that other right-wing movements in Europe had undergone. Polish Revisionist activists needed to look no further than their own country; in the early 1930s, the National Democrats [Endecja], Poland’s leading right-wing ethno-nationalist party, welcomed young militants into their ranks, only to have them challenge the movement’s veteran leadership.54 Moshe Lejzerowicz’s letter of protest was far more explicit in its critique of Betar’s dictatorial tendencies. “It’s obvious,” he wrote in August 1931, soon after the agreement was proposed, “that Betar’s members would vote in a

52 “Yoman” Tel Chaj February 1930, p.3, Propes, “Di revizionistishe konferentz” Biuletin shel betar be- polin: avodatenu vol. 1, 1931, p.3 (undated). 53 Jakób Rothmann to Revisionist London Executive, 5 September 1931, JI/G33/1/10. See also letters from Revisionist activists in Tarnopol and Czortków: Unaddressed letter from Tarnopol, 15 June 1931, JI/G33/1/10; Local Council of Revisionists in Czortków to Revisionist Council in Lwów 10 April 1931 JI/G33/1/10. 54 Mikołaj Stanisław Kunicki, “The Polish Crusader: The Life and Times of Bolesław Piasecki, 1915-1979” (Ph.D diss, Stanford University, 2004), pp. 13-23.

197 democratic organization according to Jabotinsky’s wishes.” “If,” he continued, “the head of Betar [Jabotinsky] believes that he can propose a belief with the power of a soldier, all of the democratic institutions of the Revisionist movement are entirely unnecessary: Betar should declare itself as the Revisionist organization and a dictatorship should be declared for the movement.”55 Lejzerowicz knew that if Jabotinsky had his way, the letter’s prophecy would only be fulfilled in part; the leadership positions within the Revisionist councils would be overrun by Betar activists awaiting Jabotinsky’s command, but the movement would continue to insist it upheld democratic values. It was only a matter of time, Lejzerowicz feared, until Jabotinsky’s youth-centered strategy, with the Gentlemen’s Agreement at its core, would erode the movement’s democratic edifice altogether.

Obedient Rebels in Action: Jabotinsky’s “Putsch” and its Aftermath

The winter of 1933 provided Jabotinsky with the chance to put his authoritarian strategy, which relied upon ideas about who youth were and how they were expected to behave, to the test. In early 1933, Meir Grossman called for a meeting to be held in the Silesian town of Katowice between Jabotinsky and leading representatives of Revisionist councils worldwide. While Grossman saw the meeting as a last-ditch effort to convince Jabotinsky to respect the authority of the Revisionist Executive, Jabotinsky saw it as an opportunity to ensure that his power to determine the course of the Revisionist movement would prevail—with or without the consent of the London Revisionist Executive. He informed the Revisionist Executive in London that the Katowice meeting would address, once and for all, the status of the Revisionists in the Zionist Organization, as well as the status that he himself held in the decision-making process of the Revisionist party.56 Long before the meeting was to take place, Jabotinsky tried to mobilize Betar groups to help him ensure that its outcome would be in his favor. At first, his approach showcased the hallmarks of his often coded, contradictory political style. When asked by a Betar leader in Lithuania over a year beforehand how Betar’s members should vote if there was a

55 Lejzerowicz to London Revisionist Executive 23 August 1931, JI/G2/5/38. 56 Jabotinsky to the London Revisionist Executive 2 January 1933.

198 referendum to determine their relationship with the Zionist Organization, Jabotinsky scolded the leader for asking the question, and warned him that he would leave Betar if his followers continued to pose such questions. He then immediately added that he would abandon Betar if they voted to remain in the Zionist Organization.57 As the meeting neared, he dispensed of the need to cushion his political desires in ambivalent language. Writing to a Betar conference in Holland days before the Katowice conference, he told them that he was confident that every Betar branch worldwide would unanimously support his demand that the Revisionist movement declare its right to conduct activity independent from the Zionist Organization.58 While there is no conclusive evidence that Jabotinsky entered the conference with a clear roadmap for political action, these and other letters clearly indicate that he was preparing to take decisive, dramatic steps to transform the Revisionist movement. After months of rising tension within the party, Jabotinsky, the four members of the London Executive and seventy representatives from Revisionist groups worldwide convened on Monday, March 20, 1933 in a hotel in Katowice (One can only wonder what the meeting’s delegates, arriving for the tense deliberations, made of the name of the hotel, “Pod Wypoczyniem,” or “At Leisure”).59 When the question of whether or not the Revisionist movement would remain in the Zionist Organization was put to a vote, the Revisionist council delegates largely sided with the London Executive; only thirteen of the seventy delegates supported Jabotinsky. Among the thirteen was Aharon Propes, Betar’s head commander in Poland, as well as two of the biryonim’s chief leaders, Uri Zvi Grinberg and the Viennese journalist Wolfgang von Weisel. Following the vote, they were summoned to a meeting in Jabotinsky’s hotel room. Joining them was David Boiko, Betar’s commander in East Galicia. According to Boiko—who, forty years later, provided one of the only eyewitness accounts of what took place in the hotel room— Jabotinsky confided that he sought to dissolve the Executive and declare the movement’s independence from the Zionist Organization. “We told him,” Boiko later recalled, “that there was no doubt that the youth would follow him, because they were ‘Jabotinsky’s

57 Jabotinsky to Mordechai Katz, 3 September 1931. 58 Jabotinsky to the Betar Conference in Holland, 9 March 1933. 59 See “Ha-mo’atza ha-olamit be-katowitz” JI/G2/7/5, p.34.

199 youth’, not ‘Revisionist youth.’”60 The next day, Jabotinsky instructed Boiko to prepare to dismiss the East Galician Revisionist leaders from their positions in the Revisionist movement, in the event that they refused to accept his proposals. Back at Pod Wypoczyniem, Jabotinsky met, behind closed doors, with members of the London Executive. The meeting lasted over thirteen hours, with no agreement reached. The conference ended with no new resolutions, and the London Executive declared that the party’s regulations would remain as they were. As soon as the meeting had ended, Jabotinsky left Katowice and traveled one hundred and twenty miles north to the industrial city of Łódź. He then set into motion a plan that severely weakened the movement’s democratic elements. On Wednesday, March 22, he informed Meir Grossman and the other members of the Executive that he was taking control of all of the Revisionist organization’s affairs, and was expelling them from their positions on the Revisionist Executive.61 He then sent a letter to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which in turn sent news of his decisions to Jewish newspapers worldwide.62 Jabotinsky’s letter, which later became known as the “Łódź Manifesto,” informed Revisionists of the decisions he had taken, and added that he would soon create a temporary executive under his command that would be based in Warsaw. Of the three members of the new executive, two would be from Poland—including Betar’s Head Commander, Aharon Propes. The geographic shift of the Executive’s location was more than just an attempt by Jabotinsky to quickly piece together an advisory board in the country in which he happened to find himself. Now in Warsaw, the capital of Piłsudski’s Poland, the movement had anchored itself within an authoritarian milieu. The language Jabotinsky used in his manifesto, and the articles written in the wake of the “putsch” to justify his actions would have been deeply familiar to his Jewish audience in Warsaw and elsewhere in Poland. As citizens of an authoritarian regime, they had long been accustomed to hearing the country’s leaders, chief among them Józef

60 Interview, David Boiko, “Ha-mo’atza ha-olamit shel ha- be-katowitz” 8 February 1971, JI/EB4, p.1. See also Joseph Schechtman, Fighter and Prophet, pp.166-170. Unlike Boiko, Schechtman insists that Jabotinsky had not reached a decision about the ‘putsch’ until after the Katowice conference. 61 Jabotinsky to Meir Grossman, 22 March 1922. 62 “Jabotinsky Suspends Revisionist Executive Following Conference” Jewish Telegraphic Agency 23 March 1933, retrieved from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Archive, http://archive.jta.org/article/1933/03/24/2798533/. See also Jabotinsky to Members of the Revisionist Movement, 22 March 1933; Jabotinsky to Betar members, 22 March 1933.

200 Piłsudski, claim that Poland’s politics were, in fact, an exercise in the purest form of democracy. Rather than speak of a split, Jabotinsky described his actions as an effort to unify the Revisionist movement. He also insisted in several articles that his action was an attempt to bring the movement back to its democratic foundations. Rather than let it be steered by a handful of men, Jabotinsky would “listen to the voice of the masses,” and, acting in the interests of the majority of Revisionists, take on the leadership of the movement.63 In the manifesto and elsewhere, Jabotinsky also urged Revisionist members to participate in the Eighteenth Zionist Congress. Jabotinsky’s willingness to bring the party to the Zionist Congress, he explained, underscored his commitment to democracy. “A dictator,” he wrote, “seeks to force his own will upon the masses…I do the opposite—I am submitting myself to the will of the majority and am going to the Congress… ”64 As ultimate proof of his democratic credentials, he notified Revisionist members that a plebiscite would be conducted within several weeks’ time to determine whether or not the party’s membership approved of the decisions he had made in Łódź. The plebiscite aimed to demonstrate to the Jewish public that every Revisionist member played a role in the decision-making process of the movement’s leadership.65 Like elections in Poland and other authoritarian countries in the region, however, the plebiscite was meant to simulate rather than implement democratic practices. Here, Jabotinsky’s ambiguous definition of “youth” became crucial. On the same day that he published the manifesto, Jabotinsky delivered an appeal to Betar members, commanding them to “stand with pride and courage for the sturdy platform of fully unifying the entire Revisionist movement.”66 A day later, he wrote the following lines to a Grossman sympathizer in Paris: “I’ll create a plebiscite, and if I’ll fail—which is doubtful if you take into consideration Betar’s members over the age of eighteen—I’ll surrender and turn aside.”67 As if to highlight the role that Betar’s age distribution would play in the plebiscite, Grossman’s own circular to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency informing them of Jabotinsky’s manifesto added, “Recently he has turned to [Brit] Trumpeldor to ask them

63 Jabotinsky, “Kruz” Avodatenu vol. 16, April 1933, p.3. 64 “Der zin fun plebisit” Moment 16 April 1933. See also “Kruz rosh Betar” Ha-Medina 26 March 1933, “Oyfruf fun Ze’ev Jabotinsky tsu di revizionistn” Ha-Medina 26 March 1933. 65 “Kruz nasi ha-tsohar” Ha-Medina 10 April 1933. 66 Jabotinsky to members of Betar, 22 March 1933, in Daniel Carpi, ed., Igrot Jabotinsky, vol. 8, p.186. 67 Jabotinsky to Israel Trivus, 23 March 1933.

201 to support the leader’s mission for Revisionist goals.”68 David Boiko’s account of the events that immediately followed the Katowice conference similarly underscore the role Betar played in Jabotinsky’s “putsch.” According to Boiko, Jabotinsky sent out instructions to Propes, which were promptly cabled to Boiko. The telegram only consisted of two words: “go ahead.” Boiko promptly summoned Lwów’s Revisionist council and told them that he had been instructed to dismiss them from their posts. In the meantime, he instructed Betar leaders to travel by motorcycle across the region and command local Betar units to take over any local offices of Revisionist councils that were not already in the youth movement’s hands.69 Without hesitation, major Polish Jewish newspapers began describing the events that were transpiring across the country as a “putsch” and a “dictator’s coup.”70 Although the “putsch” seems to have caught many Betar leaders in Poland somewhat off-guard, they immediately rallied behind Jabotinsky. Four days after Jabotinsky had published his manifesto, Betar’s national newspaper, Ha-Medina, dedicated an issue to defending Jabotinsky’s actions. “Finally,” the newspaper enthused on the same page that Jabotinsky’s appeal was published, “the road has been found: the decisive concentration of the monistic movement around its leader in the name of one goal.” True to Jabotinsky’s self-presentation as a democrat, the article added, “we, who know Jabotinsky as a radical democrat…. know that… this very man who hated to even hear the term “leader” did what he did because he had no other option.”71 The newspaper also featured articles in which ‘ordinary’ Betar members begged Jabotinsky to take power in order to save the Zionist movement.72 Predictably, the articles refrained from trying to explain the volte-face of their leader, who had spent the past year fiercely fighting against his party’s participation in the upcoming Zionist Congress. Instead, they described how participating in the Congress was just one way in which Jabotinsky was preparing the

68 “Text Eines vom Londoner Büro der JTA Mitgeteilten Telegramms, datiert 23 März 1933” JI/G2/7/5, p.106. 69 Interview, David Boiko, “Ha-mo’atza ha-olamit shel ha-tzohar be-katowitz” 8 February 1971, JI/EB4, p.2. 70 “Majer Grossman o zamachu dyktatorskim Żabotyńskiego” Nasz Przegląd 24 March 1933; “Grossman przeciw puczowi Żabotyńskiego” Chwila 25 March 1933. 71 “Ha-tokhnit ha-makhri’a, Ha-Medina 26 March 1933. 72 L. Lipshitz, “Ver zol firn?” Ha-Medina 26 March 1933.

202 Revisionist movement to be “ready for battle.”73 Downplaying the fact that Jabotinsky’s putsch aimed to destroy the political influence of his opponents on the London Revisionist Executive, one article added as an afterthought, “it is unfortunate that Meir Grossman and his own circle of friends did not understand the liberating deed that Vladimir Jabotinsky performed.”74 This language of liberation permeated other articles in which Betar’s leaders argued that the “putsch” was the ultimate democratic act, empowering the masses to have their voices finally heard. In an article written just prior to the plebiscite, Propes reminded his readers that they were not Jabotinsky’s passive, powerless and mute servants. Instead, Propes insisted, “he listens to you: the nation speaks to him… he is ours, entirely ours.”75 Sure enough, when a plebiscite was staged within the movement in April, well over ninety percent of Betar voted for Jabotinsky. In the months that followed, Betar leaders took over the positions previously filled by Revisionist supporters who were sympathetic to the London Revisionist Executive. In Eastern Galicia, for example, Betar’s leaders reported in 1934 that the “Revisionist” infrastructure relied almost exclusively on older Betar members, adding that thanks to their efforts, “they saved the movement after the Katowice events.”76 Revisionist opponents of the putsch in Poland were also quick to highlight the role that Betar played in Jabotinsky’s plebiscite victory. Here too, the movement’s increasing authoritarianism was described as the triumph of the political mores of youth over the political traditions of their elders. In the northeastern town of Baranowicze, for example, a former Betar leader who was also the editor of the city’s weekly Yiddish newspaper divided the Revisionist camp into two: the youth of Betar, “compelled by a command” to vote; and on the other side, “the older and more responsible”77 Revisionists, who ultimately chose to boycott the vote. Supporters of the putsch, too, described it as a victory for Jewish youth. Reporting on the Katowice events in Palestine, Hazit Ha’am informed its readers that the attempts of the London Executive “to turn the movement of rebellion in the Zionist movement” into a group “whose only task would be to argue in

73 “Vos iz geshen nokh katowitz?” Ha-Medina 26 March 1933. 74 Ibid. 75 Propes, “Unzer” Avodatenu vol.16, April 1936, p.2. 76 Avodatenu: din ve-heshbon shel mifkedet ha-galil le-betar le-polanya ha-ktana ha-mizrahit be-lvov (Lwów: 1935), p.19. 77 “Erklerung” Baranovitsher vort 23 April 1933.

203 meetings” was prevented by “youth [who] understood the spirit of the Leader, and walked in his footsteps without hesitation.”78 Jabotinsky, too, looked back on the events that had unfolded in generational terms. As the dust began to settle from the putsch, and Jabotinsky turned his attention to the upcoming Zionist Congress, he wrote to veteran Revisionist activist Shlomo Jacobi to reflect on the events of the previous two months. “There’s nothing to do,” Jabotinsky concluded, “you and all of your fascist generation were right about one thing: it is forbidden for leaders to be humble… ”79 Jabotinsky’s assessment succinctly captured the strategy that had propelled his political activity for months: By depicting himself as powerless before the force of youth, he believed that he could gain far more influence than ever before over the fate of the Revisionist movement, and, he hoped, the future of the Zionist project. This strategy, however, came with a price. Only one month after the putsch, members of Poland’s former Revisionist Executive published a scathing open letter to Jabotinsky in Haynt. Addressing Jabotinsky directly, they asked him why Betar, “at whose helm you stand, and whose deeds you are legally and morally responsible for” had begun a campaign of intimidation in Poland, seeking to silence the few Revisionists in the country who supported Grossman’s efforts to start his own political party. This campaign, they claimed, consisted of Betar activists harassing audience members at pro- Grossman public gatherings, physically assaulting local Revisionist council members, and informing the police that Revisionists who opposed Jabotinsky’s “putsch” were dangerous. There was no question in their minds of who bore responsibility for these attacks: “The specific inner structure of Betar, whose leaders are subordinated to your commands and those of your colleagues, leaves no doubt that all of the actions and deeds of Betarim… are the direct or indirect result of your commands and instructions.”80 From the very inception of his youth movement, Jabotinsky had been unflinching in fending off accusations that Betar members were behaving badly. Yet this time was different. While Jabotinsky never publicly responded to these accusations, he quickly sent a distressed letter to Betar leaders in Poland, asking if these accusations were indeed

78 “Darko shel Jabotinsky—derekh !” Hazit Ha’am 28 March 1933. 79 Jabotinsky to Shlomo Jacobi, 13 May 1933. 80 “Ofener brif tsum Jabotinskin” Haynt April 27 April 1933.

204 true, and added that he would never condone such actions.81 What was it about these accusations that were unsettling enough for Jabotinsky to ask Betar’s leaders whether or not they were true? The key, perhaps, lies in the letter’s use of the phrase “direct or indirect” when describing Jabotinsky’s responsibility for the actions of his members. The phrase seemed to gesture towards the fact that Jabotinsky’s commands and instructions, when embedded in his deliberately ambiguous prose, often presented a range of interpretive possibilities. By extension, the letter also seemed to imply that the flexible language Jabotinsky employed when addressing Betar youth could result in actions that differed, and even contradicted, his own vision for the youth movement. For these actions too, the letter insisted, Jabotinsky would be held responsible. Having just declared that he controlled the Revisionist movement in its entirety, this was a claim that was difficult for Jabotinsky to dismiss. The Revisionist Executive’s accusations were the least of Jabotinsky’s public relations problems. No sooner had Jabotinsky published his “Łódź Manifesto,” newspapers were carrying stories of another authoritarian measure taken in Europe—this time, in Germany. On March 23, 1933, just one day after Jabotinsky had expelled the Revisionist Executive from their positions, President Paul von Hindenburg signed a bill that allowed the country’s new chancellor, , to enact laws without the participation of the German parliament. While there was fervent debate among Jewish observers about how long the Nazi party would last in power, it was clear to most that antisemitism played a central role in the party’s ideology, and that Nazi Germany’s dismantling of democracy had the potential to threaten the security of Jews in Germany and possibly beyond. Opponents of Revisionism, who had long likened the movement’s leader to Mussolini, now found a new nickname for Jabotinsky: Vladimir Hitler. The brown hue of Betar’s uniforms quickly became associated with shirts worn by the Nazi party’s paramilitary squad, the . By linking right-wing Zionism to Nazism—in effect, accusing the Revisionist movement of being no different than the most powerful antisemitic threat facing Jews in Europe—an array of Jewish political parties on the Left hoped to convince Revisionist supporters to abandon the movement in

81 Jabotinsky to Betar’s Head Command in Poland, 5 May 1933 in Igrot Jabotinsky, p.205.

205 droves. Despite having worked alongside Jabotinsky for years, supporters of Grossman, too, began to echo these claims.82 Had the descriptions of the Revisionist movement as the Jewish equivalent of the Nazi party remained the preserve of the movement’s opponents, Jabotinsky might have been able to dismiss these claims as no more than political rhetoric. He did, indeed, make every effort to do so, at one point even suggesting that the Polish Jewish public could just as easily look at Betar’s brown uniforms and think of dark chocolate, rather than Nazi militiamen.83 Several activists within Betar, however, were publicly arguing that there was much to admire in Nazism. In the very same newspaper edition of Hazit Ha’am informing readers in Mandate Palestine of Jabotinsky’s “putsch,” Achimeir had gone so far as to suggest that the Revisionist movement had a great deal to learn from the Nazi party.84 Just days after Poland’s former Revisionist Executive had accused Betar members of assaulting local Grossman supporters, news arrived that Labor Zionist leaders in Berlin had been arrested, and their clubhouse dismantled. The culprits, they claimed, were Betar leaders who had informed Nazi officials that the Labor Zionist activists were communists in disguise. Much like when he was confronted with the former Revisionist council members’ open letter in Haynt, Jabotinsky did not presume that the claims from Berlin were false. Urging a supporter in Paris to look into the matter, Jabotinsky insisted that “despite the enthusiasm of millions [in Germany] that is impressing our [Jewish] youth,” Nazism was no more than “a type of cheap… assimilation.” “[E]very flattery to the [Nazi] government and its people, or to their ideas,” he warned, were “criminal acts.”85 In his strongest letter yet to the editors of Hazit Ha’am, Jabotinsky threatened to shut down the newspaper, throw its editors out of the Revisionist party and cut all personal ties with them if they continued to publicly praise Hitler.86 Significantly, the letter was entirely devoid of the ambivalent language and mixed messages that had characterized nearly all

82 B. Yoz, “Gemaynzame list als manevr” Der nayer veg 13 May 1933; see also Jabotinsky’s reaction in letter to Max Bodenheimer, 17 May 1933, Igrot, p.212. 83 Jabotinsky, “A filozofishe nakht” Der Moment 19 May 1933. 84 Abba Ahimeir, “Histadrut ha-tsionit ha-shlishi” Hazit Ha’am 28 March 1933. See also Achimeir, “Romantic Realism or Realistic Romanticism” Hazit Ha’am 30 September 1932. For a discussion of the movement’s early assessments of Nazism, see Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror 1940-1949 (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 20-22. 85 Jabotinsky to Hans Bloch, 5 May 1933, vol. 8, p.206. 86 Jabotinsky to the editors of Hazit Ha’am, 17 May 1933, Igrot, vol. 8, p.210.

206 of his previous exchanges with the biryonim.87 These incidents served as a stark warning to Jabotinsky that the linguistic flexibility which had previously served him well had its limits. Equally significant was the way in which Jabotinsky attempted to address the murmurings of sympathy for the Nazis that he had heard were circulating among Betar members in Poland. Like his letter to the Maximalist editors of Hazit Ha’am, his response to Betar left little room for interpretation. “Even if it appeared in Hazit Ha’am,” Jabotinsky warned Betar members in an article in the widely-circulated Yiddish-language newspaper Moment, “don’t waste time on trying to ‘understand’ the enemy’s soul…one must first annihilate the enemy; then the historian can come along and ‘understand’ as much as he desires.”88 Although the article echoed the message given to the editors of Hazit Ha’am, the way in which it was presented differed from Jabotinsky’s letter in one crucial respect. Rather than choose to speak directly to his reader, as he had chosen to do in his correspondence with the Maximalists, he chose to create an elaborate framework for his article in which he claimed that the ideological messages that were being delivered were not his own. Rather, Jabotinsky presented himself as a bystander, recording the words of a young woman sitting at a campfire, engaging in discussion with her fellow Betar members about the future of the movement. Jabotinsky’s use of the voice of youth as an interlocutor for his own positions was more than just a rhetorical ploy. It also signaled that he no longer presumed that his voice alone would be sufficient to convince Betar’s members to obey his commands. If the March “putsch” had proven to Jabotinsky that his approach to constructing the concept of youth could reap tremendous political gains, his experiences in the following months showcased the ways in which the very discursive system he had helped to construct threatened to undermine his political career. In an age of increasing political extremism, the burgeoning power of “youth”—both imagined and real—posed a threat to Jabotinsky’s role as the ultimate arbiter of how the movement turned its political rhetoric into practice. In the months to come, the notion that Jewish youth held this power would ultimately lead Jabotinsky, and other Jewish politicians in Poland, to question whether or not they had gone too far in giving youth

87 See, for example, Jabotinsky to Yermiyahu Halperin, 5 April 1929; Jabotinsky to Shlomo Gepstein, 16 October 1930; Jabotinsky to Y.H. Yeivin, 9 August 1932. 88 Jabotinsky, “A filozofishe nakht” Der Moment 19 May 1933.

207 pride of place in modern Jewish politics. Although their unease about the power of Jewish youth in politics steadily rose as the Zionist Congress approached, it would take an event thousands of miles away to convince Jewish political leaders that youth politics were not only dangerous, but also deadly.

Terror on the Jewish Street? Violence, Generational Conflict and the Limits of Youth Politics

It was only once doctor Arie Alotin walked through the doors of Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem on Friday, June 16, 1933 that he realized why he had been called in at eleven o’clock at night. There, lying on a table in the corridor, covered in his own sweat and blood, was Dr. Haim Arlosoroff, one of the most powerful Labor Zionist leaders in Mandate Palestine. He had been walking on a Tel Aviv beach with his wife only hours beforehand when two men approached him. One carried a flashlight; the other, a gun. The bullet had cut through a vital artery in Arlosoroff’s abdomen. By the time Dr. Alotin began surgery on his still-conscious patient, it was too late. During an attempt to transfuse blood after sewing the artery shut, Arlosoroff lost consciousness and died.89 Three days later, Arlosoroff’s wife was brought into an office of the Mandate Palestine Police Criminal Investigations Division. The officers had lined up sixteen men, standing side by side, for Mrs. Arlosoroff to inspect. The Chief Inspector later reported that about two-thirds of the way into the line, she nearly collapsed when she locked eyes with a heavy-set young man, twenty-seven years of age. He had been picked up that day at the Jerusalem apartment of the brit ha-biryonim leader Abba Achimeir. When it became clear that he was to remain under arrest and be charged with assassinating Arlosoroff, the police officers permitted the young man to send one telegram. The telegram, instructing his parents to be calm, was then coded and dispatched. Soon afterwards, some twenty-five hundred kilometers away in Brześć-Litewski, a city in Poland’s eastern borderlands, a telegram operator began transcribing the message.90 The telegram, along with telegrams from Jewish leaders in Mandate Palestine reporting the

89 Court testimony of Arie Alotin in “Depositions, Minutes of the Court, July 27, 1933-January 24, 1934” JI/H8-11/1. 90 Y. Khrust, “Tsvey telegramen” Ha-Medina 15 June 1934 p.4.

208 event, quickly spread throughout Poland: Avraham Stavsky, a member of Betar in Poland who had arrived in Palestine only three months beforehand, was accused of murdering Haim Arlosoroff. News of Arlosoroff’s death and Stavsky’s arrest shocked Zionists worldwide and thrust Poland’s Betar into the public spotlight. If the accusations were true, a Betar member would become the first member of a Zionist organization to assassinate another Zionist. Among those in Poland to receive the news of Arlosoroff’s murder and Stavsky’s arrest was David Ben-Gurion, general secretary of the Histadrut. One of the most powerful and popular Labor Zionists in Mandate Palestine, Ben-Gurion had arrived in Poland only weeks before at the behest of his colleagues to campaign on behalf of the Histadrut for the Eighteenth Zionist Congress. That Ben-Gurion and other prominent Labor Zionist leaders like Berl Locker had converged in Poland on the eve of voting for the Congress was no surprise; the majority of voters for the Congress lived in the country, and most Zionist leaders believed that the fate of their success hinged upon gaining Polish Jewish support. While devastated by the news of their colleague’s death, Labor Zionist leaders saw in Stavsky’s arrest—and the subsequent arrest of several other Betar members and leaders in Palestine—the ingredients for the perfect publicity campaign to defeat the Revisionist movement at the Congress elections, only three weeks away. Playing on already growing fears in Poland about the widening gap growing between the attitudes and behaviors of adults and young Jews coming of age in interwar Poland, Labor Zionists and other opponents of Betar presented Arlosoroff’s murder as the violent manifestation of a generational conflict within the Zionist movement. This claim allowed them to take aim at the system of youth politics that Jabotinsky had cultivated within Betar. If left unchecked, they claimed, the political system that had lifted Jabotinsky to power in Poland—from its provocative, ambiguous rhetoric to its insistence that the impulsive, irresponsible temperament of youth could be harnessed by political leaders—would bring about the destruction of the Zionist project to build a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Under the wing of Jabotinsky, Labor Zionist leaders claimed, Jewish youth in Poland would import the political violence and radicalism that was sweeping throughout Europe into Mandate Palestine.

209 Over the course of the next fourteen months, as Stavsky and other Revisionists were tried in Palestine, youth politics itself was put on trial as well. With Labor Zionists and their sympathizers rallying behind the Yiddish-language daily Haynt, and Revisionists and their defenders adopting the newspaper’s chief rival, Moment, the Polish-Jewish press proclaimed the fate of young Jews in modern Jewish politics to be the chief issue that the country’s Jewish population had to address. At stake was not only the physical safety of these Jews, but also the very ways in which modern Jewish politics were practiced. From the very moment that the news of Arlosoroff’s death reached Poland, concerns about generational conflict took center stage. Eulogies written by Labor Zionists and their sympathizers portrayed Arlosoroff as the heir to the political mores followed by generations of Zionist leaders before him. He was hailed as a symbol of the Western political tradition, a leader poised to continue the traditions of reason, statesmanship, Kultur and parliamentarism cultivated by his predecessors. Speaking in one of Warsaw’s largest theatres at a memorial service, David Ben-Gurion praised Arlosoroff as “one of the most enlightened thinkers of the movement” while Polish Zionist leader A. Levinson described him as “the highest synthesis of humanity,” embodying the best of both western ideals and ‘Jewishness.’”91 Eulogizing Arlosoroff, representative and Zionist leader Yitzhak Grinboym wrote that Arlosoroff embodied the ideal of Zionist political statesmanship and noted his willingness to work with Zionists of different political orientations in order to build the Yishuv.92 These very same journalists and political leaders juxtaposed their descriptions of Arlosoroff, and the political culture he embodied, to their depictions of Stavsky. In the days following Stavsky’s arrest, many journalists rushed to Warsaw’s train station to travel to Brześć-Litewski to find out more about the Betar member. Reports that reached the offices of Haynt and the Bundist Naye Folktsaytung in Warsaw offered a portrait of a youth who was Arlosoroff’s diametric opposite. According to reporters, Stavsky was a stocky, brutish, impulsive delinquent, whose sheer physical force compensated for his lack of intellect. Besides being charged with gambling, “ruining” the lives of women and

91 “Impozante troyer-akademiye in ‘Nowości’ tsum ondenk fun Dr. Haim Arlosoroff” Haynt 19 June 1933. 92 Y. Grinboym, “Haim Arlosoroff” Haynt 28 June 1933.

210 brawling in the streets with young Jewish socialists, Stavsky was most remembered in his hometown for the gun slung at the side of his waist.93 Taking stock of this portrait, Haynt’s editor, Avraham Goldberg, described Stavsky as a “sick” and “lawless youth,” an “insane fanatic, a true product of our dark diaspora.” In his call for calm that followed, he linked Arlosoroff’s assassination to generational conflict: “Let no one from our large camp,” he cautioned, “take one step in this moment of deep despair and carry out such deeds that would desecrate the work that generations of Jews, until Haim Arlosoroff, sacrificed their lives for.”94 Here too, Goldberg’s plea suggested that Arlosoroff’s death marked the end of the political culture cultivated by Zionist leaders since the nineteenth century. Goldberg’s description of Stavsky’s alleged behavior as a product of the “dark diaspora” intended to make clear to readers that the origins of the political violence of the new generation of Zionists lay firmly in Europe, and that Betar was importing this violent political culture to Palestine. Similarly, other Labor Zionists and their sympathizers writing in Haynt condemned the usual “diaspora” suspects when describing the origins of the violent youth culture Betar members allegedly promoted. In an article calling upon the Jews of Poland to reassess the state of Zionist politics, Haynt’s Y.M. Nayman told readers that “the murderer of Arlosoroff…shares the same mentality of Niewiadomski,” referring to the assassin of Poland’s first president, Gabriel Narutowicz.95 “One has the impression,” another Haynt journalist reported several days later as he met Betar members from the kresy province of Nowogródek, “that one finds oneself in a circle of none other than—yes, let us say it—Endek [right-wing Polish nationalist] youth. The argumentation of Betar youth is so similar to that of the Great Poland Camp.” The older youth who led Betar organizations in the shetl, he continued, believed “that Hitler’s program will cure Germany and that Hitler has returned authority and esteem to his country. They, like the Endecja, appropriated Hitler’s program, only without the Aryan

93 “Ver iz der merder?” Haynt 21 June 1933; “Der fardekhtiker in dermordn Dr. Arlosoroff iz a revisionist fun poyln” Naye folktsaytung 21 June 1933; “Vegn bashuldiktn in mord fun arlozorov” Naye folktsaytung 26 June 1933. 94 A. Goldberg, “Ruhig!” Haynt 21 June 1933. Emphasis mine. 95 M. Nayman, “Dos vort” Haynt 24 June 1933.

211 Paragraph.”96 No matter their epithet of choice, opponents of Betar saw its youth culture as the conduit for radical European politics into the Yishuv. Inextricably bound to their descriptions of this new violent youth culture was the question of who bore responsibility for its presence. In answering this question, journalists and political leaders sympathetic to Labor Zionists attempted to expose the potential pitfalls of empowering young Jews to be actors in the political sphere. On the one hand, they argued that Jewish youth were passive, helpless victims of political indoctrination. Even before Stavsky’s name appeared in the press, Labor Zionist leaders hinted that Jabotinsky bore responsibility for the murder. Speaking at a memorial for Arlosoroff, a leader of the socialist Po’alei Tsiyon told the audience, “the murderers are not guilty for performing the deed, but rather those who educated them to perform such acts.”97 “Gone is the old Jabotinsky, the democratic leader,” wrote a prominent Polish Jewish journalist named Bezalel Katz in an open letter to the Revisionist leader; “now, he is carrying himself away [mitgerisn zikh] with a mass of naïve, innocent and directionless [unerfarene] youth, who leap to call the leader holy and blindly follow his will.”98 Taking the image of the authoritarian leader one step further, prominent journalist Ben Yeushson entitled his own article condemning Betar “The Messiah of the Knife.” The article included an image, taking up nearly half the page, of scouting knives that Betar members were allegedly commanded to keep with them at all times. By describing Jabotinsky as a self-styled messianic figure instructing his followers to commit acts of murder, Yeushson sought to underscore the extent to which Revisionism had abandoned the “national revival according to the Jewish interpretation [peyrush],” promoting instead a nationalism that was “wildly foreign to the Jewish spirit and Jewish mentality.” 99 Several months later, to mark the tenth anniversary of Betar, Yeushson reiterated his portrayal of Betar members as naïve youth who had been corrupted by Revisionist ideology. As members of the Revisionist movement, he wrote, Jewish youth “drunk with high-sounding slogans…drunk with egoism, with megalomania” were “educated in the reckless… spirit of terror and lawlessness, of brutal arrogance against the honorable old Zionist

96 Ben Shlomo, “Jabotinsky ferbreytet zayn operatsions baze” Haynt 17 July 1933. 97 “Troyer ferzamlung in varshe” Yediot He-halutz 19 June 1933. 98 Bezalel Katz, “An ofener briv tsu h.Vl.Jabotinsky” Haynt 2 July 1933. 99 B. Yeushson. “Mashiakh ben meser” Haynt 9 July 1933.

212 workers.”100 These descriptions of Betar intended to send a clear message to other Jewish political movements as well: devoid of the maturity and caution required of political participation, youth could be easily swayed to perform horrific deeds. While Labor Zionist activists described youth as passive, vulnerable victims of political indoctrination, they simultaneously warned of the danger of allowing Jewish youth to play an active role in constructing political meaning. At the heart of their critique was not only the way in which Jabotinsky constructed his prose, but also the ways in which it was read by Betar members. Here, too, journalists insisted that the wide generational gap manifested itself in the ways that adults and children listened to, interpreted and used language. “What the ‘leader’ clothed in a literary manner of speaking [redensartn],” Haynt writer M. Kleynman observed, “the Revisionist boys [yinglekh] translate into their own language, according to the language of their culture.”101 Concluding his open letter to Jabotinsky, Bezalel Katz wrote, “I ask you openly and politely: do you still have it in mind, after seeing how your students translate your words, to go in the same path of [calling for] ‘breaking’ and ‘slaughtering’?”102 Katz’s evocation of the term “breaking” referred to an article published by Jabotinsky a year earlier, in which he called on Revisionists to “break” the monopoly of the Histadrut in the Yishuv’s workforce.103 Although Jabotinsky later insisted that the term “break” had nothing to do with condoning violence against the Left and insisted that he opposed any acts of violence against other Jews, the article’s title was widely interpreted by the Zionist Left as a clever way in which to incite Betar youth to violence without having to claim responsibility for their actions.104 On the eve of the Congress elections, Labor Zionists once again attacked Jabotinsky’s prose. Focusing on his call for Betarim “not to stop in the face of danger when leading the battle for the upcoming election campaign”, a Haynt article noted, “this expression… is so general, too elastic, that… Betarim… can interpret it differently and say that first, they must destroy the meetings [of the Left].” “Such a

100 B. Yeushson, “Betar” Haynt 19 December 1933. 101 M. Kleynman, “Koydem kol—erlekh zayn!” Haynt 17 July 1933. 102 Bezalel Katz, “An ofener briv tsu h.Vl.Jabotinsky” Haynt 2 July 1933. 103 Jabotinsky, “Yo, brekhn!” Haynt 4 November 1932. 104 Jabotinsky, “A gut yor” Moment 27 October 1933.

213 call,” the article continued, was “an open and clear call to his members to perform acts of violence and terror” which would turn “Jewish Poland into a bloody battlefield.”105 If a reader of Haynt sympathetic to Labor Zionists had perused Betar journals in the spring of 1933, he or she would have found much evidence to support the claims of left-leaning journalists about the relationship between the movement’s youth politics and the rise of internecine political violence in the Zionist movement. While no Betar journalists had explicitly called upon their members to murder the youth movement’s Jewish opponents, there were a series of articles that, taken together, could easily have been used to justify Arlosoroff’s assassination. In March 1933, Betar’s director of defense training, Yermiyahu Halperin, began to promote a new ethos of defense for the movement, which he termed “Hagana be-hatkafa” [Defense through attack]. Halperin explained that Betar’s position on violence aimed to challenge “Jewish youth [who] have adjusted to thinking that their fate is to suffer in silence and keep their mouths shut.” Insisting that “our tactics must be the same as our opponents,” Halperin maintained that in order for Jewish youth to achieve their goals, “[a]ll the demonstrations, protests and requests [for intervention] only have value… [with] the power of the fist behind them.”106 His proposal was simple: young Jews should organize themselves into small armed cells, and prepare for acts of “partisan warfare.” In the wake of an antisemitic attack, the cells would be called upon to retaliate. The aim of these surprise attacks, Halperin explained, would be to instill panic among their enemies and to captivate the attention of the broader public. With his emphasis on the theatrical aspects of the violence, its spontaneous nature and its unconventional tactics, Halperin was describing the value of terrorist activity within Betar. Indeed, elaborating upon these ideas one year later, Halperin predicted that “fear in the face of terror”—which included “unexpected attacks by a [seemingly] invisible enemy”—would “destroy discipline among the ranks” of their enemies.107

105 “Jabotinskys ruf tsu terror” 30 June 1933. 106 Y. Halperin, “Hagana be-hatkafa” Ha-Medina 12 March 1933. 107 Y. Halperin, She’elat Ha-bitahon ha-ivri: Ikronei ha-strategiya ve-ha-taktika shel ha- ha-ivrit (Warsaw: Remona, 1934), p.41.

214 Betar’s supporters would have been quick to point out that the article “Defense Through Attack” was written as a response to antisemitic attacks. Crucially, however, the article also laid blame for the antisemitic attacks on the Jewish Left. Halperin’s reasoning was as follows: The reason for the increased number of these attacks is the communist and revolutionary elements spreading among Jewish youth. They [the ‘leftist’ elements] are spreading because they [Jewish youth] feel like they have no other option, because they lack the option to defend their lives and rights. And governments see that this revolutionary danger is growing and they do all they can to stop this growth. And their means[to do so] is antisemitism…[O]bviously for us Zionists, there is no doubt that…we have to pay the price of our lives for the deeds of these youth…[leftist Jewish youth] are far more dangerous to our national ideal than the antisemitic movement.108

Other articles made more explicit the links between left-wing Zionists and the antisemites Halperin proposed to attack. In response to a series of brawls initiated by Histadrut members in Palestine against Revisionist workers in the fall of 1932 and the spring of 1933, Jabotinsky accused the Histadrut of launching ‘’ and urged Betar members to continue “destroying, step by step, the rule of the traitors.”109 As the winter of the 1933 progressed, the accusations became more incendiary, with Revisionist leaders suggesting that left-wing Zionists were actively collaborating with antisemites to physically harm Betar members. Uri Zvi Grinberg, now editor of Poland’s chief Revisionist paper, re-published articles from Hazit Ha’am that accused Labor Zionists of teaming up with Arab workers to attack Betar youth.110 A newly-established newspaper for Betar members in Poland, Latvia and Lithuania reported that “leftist” Jews were recruiting Polish farmers in order to attack members of Betar, and warned that “the time will come when real pogroms will take place by ordinary Christians who were organized…by the sons of Israel.” 111 Betar’s press also devoted a many of its columns to likening the Histadrut to Nazis. In an article entitled “Consequences,” Halperin noted that the Histadrut “longs to rule with power over the thinking of all of the Hebrew Yishuv and to establish their own dictatorship; if one recalls the established terror that they are carrying out against anyone

108 Halperin, “Hagana be-hatkafa” Ha-Medina 12 March 1933. 109 Jabotinsky to Betar in the Land of Israel, 1 May 1933. 110 “Ven vet kumen a sof tsum roytn teror in erts-yisroel?” Di Velt 28 April 1933, p.11; “Un unzere haveyrim in ‘hazit ha’am’ shraybn” Di Velt 12 May 1933, p.6. 111 B. Lubotsky, “Mifletset ha-demagogiya be-israel” Ha-medina 23 June 1933.

215 who doesn’t agree with them or doesn’t want to join their organization, it brings to mind the most recent events in Germany—with the difference that the scoundrels in Germany haven’t yet started to spill the blood of babies and young girls.”112 These and other articles blurred the lines between the Jewish enemy, who Jabotinsky had previously insisted should never be subject to Betar’s violence, and the non-Jewish enemy, who Betar members were encouraged to target. As a result, Betar activists created a discursive space for their youth movement’s members to envision the assassination of a left-wing Zionist opponent as ethically permissible. If anyone on the Zionist Left were to embody the alleged link between Nazi Germany and the Histadrut in the spring of 1933, it would be Haim Arlosoroff. Throughout the spring of 1933, Arlosoroff led negotiations between the Zionist Federation of Germany and the Nazi Government to help facilitate the emigration of German Jews to Palestine. The agreement, which came to be known as the Ha’avara (Transfer) agreement, allowed German Jews to emigrate to Palestine with greater ease, so long as they gave up their property assets to the German government, which would then be invested in exporting German products to Palestine. Jabotinsky, who had recently launched a campaign in Poland to boycott German goods, saw the negotiations as an ineffective way to help German Jews and a dangerous precedent for collusion with the Nazi government. News first arrived of the agreement’s negotiations at a press conference in Warsaw; there, the Revisionist press later reported, Arlosoroff “cold bloodedly” announced that “he was prepared to make a pact with Hitler, at the very moment when every Jew stands in battle against Hitler.”113 Writing in Di Velt, Uri Zvi Grinberg called on his readers to “carry this news to all Jewish homes… the call should spread throughout the nation, ‘Get off the Jewish stage, Dr. Arlosoroff!’”114 In a far more direct and provocative call, Wolfgang Von Weisl allegedly told Betar members that had Arlosoroff been on trial for the agreement, he would have received a death sentence.115

112 Y. Halperin, “Konsekventiyot!” Ha-Medina 14 May 1933. 113 Uri Zvi Grinberg, “Arlosorov’s hitleryade” Di velt 9 June 1933, p.3. 114 Ibid. 115 David Ben Gurion, Yediot He-halutz, 25 June 1933.

216 While Labor Zionists could point to no explicit calls made to attack Arlosoroff, Betar had certainly left a sufficient trail of articles to convince Jewish readers that it was not altogether impossible that Stavsky had committed the crime. It was this trail that Labor Zionists would repeatedly point to over the course of Stavsky’s trial. Labor Zionists relied heavily upon these articles to make their case against voting for Revisionists at the Eighteen Zionist Congress. In the weeks that followed the murder, Haynt, along with Labor Zionist publications in Poland, presented numerous collages of quotes taken from articles written by Jabotinsky, Abba Achimeir, Uri Zvi Grinberg, Wolfgang Von Weisl and other activists on the Zionist Right.116 Betar’s leaders and members faced a formidable challenge. Not only had Labor Zionist activists in Poland gained the sympathy of Haynt, the country’s leading Yiddish newspaper. They had also skillfully linked Arlosoroff’s murder and Stavsky’s arrest with broader, deep-seated and intense concerns expressed within the country about Polish Jewish youth and generational politics. Jabotinsky and his supporters understood that the strategy they would choose to adopt to respond to the Labor Zionists’ “youth panic” campaign would help determine whether or not the Jewish public would abandon the Revisionist movement altogether or allow it to maintain its strength in Poland. With a weekly column in the Polish-Jewish daily Moment—second only to Haynt in its circulation across the country—Jabotinsky took the lead in crafting a response to the murder and the accusations. Some urged Jabotinsky to admit the possibility of Stavsky’s guilt, excommunicate him from the movement and declare, in no uncertain terms, that Revisionists abhorred political violence.117 Others insisted instead that Jabotinsky devote his time to collecting evidence from Stavsky’s friends in Palestine in order to prove that Stavsky was not on the beach that fateful night in Tel Aviv.118 Jabotinsky refused to adopt either strategy. Almost immediately after news reached him of Stavsky’s arrest, he proclaimed that Stavsky was innocent. To prove that he was indeed certain of the Betar

116 See, for example, “Ershiterende dokumentn: di efntlikhe oysforshung iber der tetigkayt fun ‘brit ha- biryonim’. Brif, dokumentn, un der tog bukh fun aba ahimeir” Haynt 29 July 1933; “Der vayterdiger fehrer vegn dem ‘brit ha-biryonim,’ sensatsyonele erklerung fun aba ahimeir vegn zayn gehenghayt tsu di printsipn fun kristentum” Haynt 15 September 1933. 117 “Kominikat fun di revizionistn in frankraykh” Haynt 26 June 1933; Max Seligman to Jabotinsky, 11 August 1933, JI/A1/3/21. 118 Jabotinsky, “Kalt un Fest” Moment 22 June 1933; “Nisht a bateylikung nor a bashuldikung” Di naye beylisade (Warsaw: Provizorishn sekretariat fun velt-union fun tsionistn-revizionistn, 1933), pp.3-4.

217 member’s innocence, he told readers that amassing evidence to prove Stavsky’s innocence was akin to Jews in the Middle Ages trying to prove that they did not use the blood of Christian children for Jewish rituals.119 Any attempts to prove Stavsky’s innocence were effectively rendered forbidden within the movement. As a result, Jabotinsky needed to choose for his colleagues and readers another strategy to attack the Labor Zionist’s claims. Ironically enough, the youth-centered rhetoric of the Labor Zionists’ campaign against the Revisionists provided the very formula for Jabotinsky’s response. Jabotinsky was no stranger to using concepts of generational conflict to convince the Jewish public to support the politics of the Zionist Right. He saw that discussions about the dangers of Jewish youth transposing the political extremism of Europe onto Palestine’s soil had touched a nerve with the Polish Jewish public. He also observed that discussions about reigning in the political power of youth could help cast the Revisionist movement as a responsible political party that sought to restore peace and order in Jewish public life. Rather than devote their time to addressing the barrage of accusations leveled against Stavsky, and the Betar youth movement as a whole, Jabotinsky and other activists on the Zionist Right chose instead to echo and at times amplify the very fears that Labor Zionists were articulating about the future of Jewish youth as political actors. The crucial difference, however, lay in whom the Revisionists deemed responsible for both corrupting Jewish youth and inciting them to perform acts of violence. In the eyes of Jabotinsky and other Betar activists, the culprits were Labor Zionist leaders. The first crucial step Jabotinsky needed to take in order to affirm Betar’s innocence was to eulogize and praise the fallen Zionist leader. Much like the Labor Zionists, concepts of generationhood became crucial to Jabotinsky’s depiction of Arlosoroff. Long practiced in the art of generational politics, Jabotinsky easily drew from the language he had used to describe himself. By representing Arlosoroff as a symbol of a bygone era of politics practiced in Jabotinsky’s ‘generation,’ the Betar leader presented the victim as a former ally rather than as a foe. Although Revisionists had previously denigrated Arlosoroff, Jabotinsky praised him as “a serious and honest servant of his nation and his conscience; principled and conscientious in every aspect of his

119 Ibid.

218 work, decent and polite even in his polemics, which is a great rarity in his political camp.”120 Here and elsewhere, readers familiar with Jabotinsky’s work would have been able to hear echoes of how the Betar leader described his own political behavior. The generational alliance Jabotinsky created between himself and Arlosoroff, he believed, permitted him to use these articles to imagine how Arlosoroff would have reacted to Stavsky’s arrest. In each of his eulogies, Jabotinsky noted that in his final moments Arlosoroff allegedly insisted that his murderers were not Jewish.121 Jabotinsky argued that releasing Stavsky would not only honor the word of the fallen leader, but would also honor the politics of the “generation” of Zionist leaders he represented. The Revisionist leader continued by claiming that Labor Zionists who were convinced of Stavsky’s guilt were not only betraying their fallen colleague, but also exploiting his death in order to undermine the very ideals he had fought for throughout his political career. Their goal, Jabotinsky insisted, was not merely to win votes at the Zionist Congress, but to also incite youth to violence. “The red insanity,” he wrote soon after the murder, “has created an atmosphere of playing with knives.”122 Referring to the clashes that had taken place between Betar members and Labor Zionists in Palestine and, to a lesser extent, Poland over the previous year, he added that the campaign against Stavsky was no more than an attempt to direct attention away from the fact that “they [Labor Zionists] were beating up children in Tel Aviv, in , in Petah Tikvah, in Kfar Saba, even here in Baranowicze.”123 Jabotinsky then presented nearly the same assortment of arguments and motifs used by Haynt’s writers to describe Jewish youth. In articles that followed the murder, he characterized Jewish youth as helpless victims of ideological indoctrination. Here, he explains the effect that the Zionist Left’s alleged reverence of class conflict had upon Jewish youth:

[T]hey [Labor Zionists] make an ideal and religion of it, they hammer these teachings into the young heads of thousands of children, who learn in special schools run by the Histadrut. And a generation is coming of age, for whom the Jewish middle class—that is to say, ninety percent of our people—are

120 Ibid. 121 Jabotinsky, “Kalt un fest”; “Über Dr. Arlosoroff und das an ihm veruebte Verbrechen” Der Judenstaat 23 June 1933, p.1; “Nisht a farteydikung, nor a bashuldikung,” p.4. 122 Ibid. 123 Ibid.

219 nothing more than a collective vampire, that draws pleasure from extracting the marrow from the bones of their [the Labor Zionist children’s] proletarian fathers and mothers, and await until the day that the proletarian children will also grow up and begin to work, in order to suck the marrow out of their young bones too…From here, and only here, does every…inhumane level of party hatred come from, which has turned our Zionist forum into a genuine battlefield.124 Like the journalists of Haynt, Jabotinsky characterized the incitement of youth as decidedly un-Jewish behavior: “Never has the world seen such a clear reflection of the psychology of pogromists. It is a new, unexpected type of assimilation: assimilation with Jew-baters. All that would take place in a Christian pogrom, they take further.”125 Betar activists and Moment journalists employed the motifs used by Jabotinsky in these early articles, and amplified their panicked tone about the future of Jewish youth. In the same volume that Jabotinsky had published his first major article to outline his position on Stavsky’s arrest, Moment journalist Shmuel Stupnicki wrote that the eagerness of the Zionist Left to accuse Stavsky demonstrated their willingness to “spill innocent blood,” and warned that “blood, Jewish blood, entire rivers of Jewish blood will drown this holy blood [that of Arlosoroff].”126 Much like the journalists of Haynt, Stupnicki framed the eagerness of the Zionist Left for violence as the product of generational conflict and contemporary European politics. “Twenty years ago,” he wrote, “we could not have imagined such behavior; we could have only imagined it among the Macedonians in the Balkans. There, one did not fight with arguments, but with the dagger, with the grenade in hand…. ”127 Moment journalists also linked Labor Zionists to Polish antisemites. A day after Stupnicki’s article was published, Moment included a headline, in thick black font, “THEY SHOUT “BIĆ ŻYDÓW! [Beat the Jews] AND ATTACK REVISIONISTS!” The article reported that in Raciąż, a small town north of Warsaw, the youth movements of Poaley Tsiyon and Frayhayt joined the Polish Socialist Party [PPS] in attacking Betar members, shouting together, “Beat the bourgeois Jews!”128 Much like the Labor Zionist activists, Revisionist sympathizers sought to play upon fears that Jewish youth were behaving like antisemites, and argued that the alleged alliance between Polish antisemitism and the campaign against Stavsky and Betar was only natural.

124 Jabotinsky, “Sholem Bayis” Moment 13 July 1933. 125 Jabotinsky, “Jabotinsky’s artikl in unzer ekstr.oysgabe” Di velt 23 June 1933, p. 7. 126 Sh. Y. Stupnicki, “Der korbn tomid” Moment 22 June 1933. 127 Ibid. 128 “Men shrayt ‘bitsh zhiduv’ un men befalt—revizionistn” Moment 23 June 1933.

220 Like the journalists of Haynt and other Labor Zionist publications, Revisionist activists and journalists not only sought to characterize the youth violence as decidedly un-Jewish behavior. Echoing their opponents once again, Revisionists offered ambivalent assessments of whether or not young Jews were to blame for the crisis unfolding in the Zionist movement. Some Revisionists took a cue from Jabotinsky by painting members of left-wing Zionist youth movements as the passive victims of indoctrination. In an article entitled, “In the name of peace,” Moment journalist Y. Heftman insisted that the calls from the Zionist Left for their members to “remain calm” were deliberately incendiary; “these very hackneyed calls for calm [shablon-baruikung] are well known from the times… in which the Christian population used to be ‘calmed’ [before a pogrom].”129 In the same volume, Joseph Schechtman, a member of Jabotinsky’s interim Revisionist Executive, added that “we now have news that in the provinces they understood the very implication [of these words] all too well: from all the towns and cities we hear about a true pogrom atmosphere that the Left has created against the Revisionists and Betar.”130 Other Revisionist activists, however, focused on the active role that young Jews could play in determining whether or not to commit acts of violence. Many of Moment’s writers imagined the political culture of Jewish youth as an entirely different language, a way of communicating political messages in the public sphere that was utterly incomprehensible to the older generation. Journalists wrote of the danger of shtetl youth “translating” the provocative language of the Jewish Left into acts of violence. Rather than accuse Jewish youth of being naïve, a letter published from the southeastern shtetl of Mizocz accused the writers of Haynt of being completely unaware of how incendiary their work could be when read and interpreted by young Jews. The letter suggested that the writers of Haynt “should trouble themselves to send their ambassadors to the small shtedlekh, where youth are divided between the Revisionists and the Left.” Only then could they be convinced “of the destruction that the ‘Zionist’ Haynt brought into the Zionist camp, and into each Jewish house where children belong to different Zionist political groups.” Were it not for Zionist leaders in shtetls across the country, the letter

129 Y. Heftman, “In nomen fun fridn” in Di naye beylisade, p. 20. 130 Schechtman, “Di shpekulatsye oyf blut” Ibid., p. 14.

221 continued, “Jewish blood would pour in the streets of every shtetl.”131 The next day, as if to confirm the warning of the letter published a day beforehand, the headline of Moment read, “Jewish Youth End Up Covered in Blood!” and reported that Haynt’s articles had “provoked youth and brought bloodshed” in Lwów, Łódź, Pinczów and Główne.132 The alarmist headline captured a crucial irony that marked the responses of both supporters and opponents of the Zionist Right. At the very same moment that they accused their opponents of inciting youth, both supporters of the Zionist Left and Right deliberately amplified the language they were using in order to provoke their readership. Put differently, they were adopting the very codes and styles of the “youth politics” that they sought to condemn. As the end of the summer approached and the Eighteenth Zionist Congress in Prague drew closer, the sense of panic in Haynt and Moment dramatically intensified. Often described by Zionists as the “parliament of the Jewish people,” the biannual Zionist Congress was considered the bastion of Zionist democracy. With many of the delegates demanding that the fate of German Jewry be addressed, the pressure for the success of the Prague Congress, scheduled for August 1933, was particularly intense. The Zionist Congress was seen by both Haynt and Moment’s journalists as a crucible for the democratic political traditions of Zionism. Through voting and parliamentary debate, Zionism could present itself as a serious and effective antidote to the politics of Nazism, as the savior of German Jewry, and as a political force to be reckoned with, both in Europe and the Yishuv. Simultaneously, however, journalists of Haynt and Moment feared that the new politics of Polish Jewry, who had fallen victim to the political culture of youth, would take hold of the Eighteenth Zionist Congress. The deliberations at the Congress confirmed their deepest fears about the state of Zionist politics and the “conflict of generations” that had seized the Zionist movement. For the journalists of Haynt and Moment, the Congress was the death knell of democracy and parliamentarism in the Zionist movement and a victory for extremist politics, with youth at the helm. An analysis of reports written by Haynt and Moment’s correspondents in Prague reveals the extent to which blame for the failure of the Congress was placed on Zionist youth.

131 “Di miuse hetse fun Haynt un ire rezultatn: shtimen fun lezer” Moment 17 July 1933. 132 “Dos yudishe yugnt entgeht in blut! Tsulib der shendlikher hets-propaganda fun haynt un zayne meshorsim, fil revizionistn farvundet—20 poaley tsiyon arestirt” Moment 18 July 1933.

222 The controversy surrounding Arlosoroff’s murder and the violent clashes of Jewish youth in Poland climbed to fever pitch in the days leading up to the Zionist Congress. Immediately following the Congress elections at the end of July, Haynt reported that members of Betar had destroyed several voting stations throughout Poland.133 In turn, Moment accused members of Ha-shomer Ha-tsair, Poaley Tsiyon Yugnt and other left-wing Zionist youth groups of similar crimes.134 Despite competing accusations, both newspapers agreed that Zionist youth had destroyed the democratic nature of the Congress well before it had taken place. The second development to ensure that the Arlosoroff murder and the role of Jewish youth in the political sphere would be at the center of the Congress’ proceedings was the arrest of over fifteen young Revisionists in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Kfar Saba on the night before the elections. They were charged with belonging to Brit Ha-biryonim, now deemed by the British government to be an illegal terrorist organization. Revisionists quickly denounced the arrests as an attempt of the Histadrut, with the help of the British government, to win over Zionist voters for the Congress; the release of most of those arrested several days later was used as proof of their claim.135 The Congress offered a platform for the Zionist Right and Left to reiterate the accusations against one another that had steadily accumulated in the summer months. On the evening of August 20, at the first meeting of Labor Zionists at the Congress, Ben- Gurion delivered a speech denouncing the Revisionist movement. The 1933 Congress, he declared, would be a life-and-death battle between democracy and Revisionism, which was no more than a “Nazified pseudo-Zionism.”136 This battle, he continued, was at its heart a battle for Jewish youth, who comprised the majority of the Revisionist membership. Insisting upon the innate innocence of Jewish youth, Ben-Gurion declared that young supporters of Revisionism had fallen under the spell of Jabotinsky. To help save these youth, he concluded, was one of the primary tasks of the Zionist movement.

133 “Brit ha-khayal” mitn “Betar” tsukt val-urnes un fernikhtet shtim-tsetlen in Kielce Haynt 23 July 1933. 134 Y. Greenboim, “Tsu di khaveyrim tsionistn!” Haynt 23 July 1933; “Oyfgerisn di valn in kielcer voyevud” Moment 24 July 1933; “Vahl teror in Polenits, di valn veln geposlt vern” Moment 25 July 1933. 135 “Befrayt 14 arestirte revizionistn: nor Achimeir vert geshtelt tsum mishpet tsuzamen mit stavskin” Moment 23 August 1933. 136 “Sharfer ongrif gegen di poylishe revizionistn un brit ha-hayal oyf der konferents fun di histadrut delegat tsum kongres” Haynt 22 August 1933.

223 Throughout the Congress, members of the Labor Zionist leadership echoed Ben-Gurion’s depiction of Jabotinsky as the commander of young terrorists and the chief culprit of the Arlosoroff murder. Haynt reported that Berl Katznelson responded to a pro-Revisionist speech by declaring, “among us sits a delegate who called his students to fight the Histadrut not with resolutions and not with parliamentarism, but with barricades in the street, with fire and blood… just as Arlosoroff fell as a victim, so too may we…pay for our convictions with our life.”137 Haynt’s reporters supplemented their summaries of such statements with their own commentary about the “invasion” of the politics of youth during the congress. Reporter Ezriel Carlbach’s account of the Congress’ attempt to formulate a public response to the Third Reich provides the most vivid account of the ways in which the “conflict the generations” was enacted on the “parliament” floor. Carlbach’s report recounted how members of Betar stormed the auditorium during the most widely anticipated session of the Congress. Just as the delegates were about to issue a declaration of protest against Germany, …suddenly, out of nowhere, a scream, a whistle. I turn around. I see Jabotinsky sitting among his excited ‘gang’ [khevre]. He sits, as usual, with folded hands and somewhat stooped, quietly advising them of what should come next. I look and I do not understand…agitated youth are about to conduct “adventures”…but how can he, Jabotinsky, sit among them, encircled by them, in the very moment when they are about to make ruins out of the last little demonstration that we have left [against the Nazis]. How does he allow these youths, with their whistling and with their wasteful screams, to destroy the historical moment, when for the first time the Jewish parliament raises its voice against Hitler? It was a shocking moment. We could, in that very moment, lose any last bit of hope in the maturity of the Jewish people.138 Longing for a “mature” nation, Carlbach articulated just how dramatically the image of youth had changed in the context of the Arlosoroff murder and the summer clashes between Poland’s Zionist youth movements. Jewish nationalism, like the other nationalisms of Europe, invoked youth as a symbol of progress, virility and hope, while the ethos of the “old” were considered antiquated and stale at best, corrosive at worst. Here, however, these images were inverted. To avoid reaching maturity, and to remain in a perpetual state of youth was to destroy rather than protect the nation’s moral foundations and political power.

137 Dr. Ezriel Carlbach. “ ‘Klasn Kampf’ un heyliger lign” Haynt 3 September 1933. 138 Dr. Ezriel Carlbach, “A shlakht?—A skandal!” Haynt 28 August 1933.

224 Although reports in Moment cast Labor Zionists as the villains, they ultimately arrived at assessments of the Congress similar to those in Haynt. Like Carlbach, Jabotinsky concluded that the Congress “broke all parliamentary traditions and destroyed the Jewish national struggle against Hitler.”139 On the same day of Carlbach’s report, Moment published its own sensational story of youth invading the Congress. Described in a front-page headline as “the shameful scandal in the Congress building,” Jabotinsky and his wife, the newspaper reported, were attacked by members of Haszomer Hacair from Poland.140 Members of Betar, the report continued, arrived soon afterwards to protect the couple. To the astonishment of Moment’s reporters, youth from Haszomer Hacair began their brawl with Betar by beating an elderly Revisionist delegate, described as a “veteran of the Zionist movement.”141 Moment could not have found a more vivid portrait to depict the “conflict of generations” that they perceived to be at the heart of the Congress’ failure. As the summer of 1933 drew to a close, the terror of Polish Zionist youth had emerged victorious: the “conflict of generations” was no longer merely rhetorical, but had become a physical conflict between the old and the young.

Words “Bold, Simple, Basic, and Brutal?” The Decline of Jabotinsky’s “Youth Politics”

By the time Stavsky’s trial had come to an end in late July 1934, nearly twelve months had passed since the pandemonium of Prague’s Zionist Congress. Throughout the intervening year, violent clashes between youth movements of the Zionist Left and Right persisted in both Poland and Palestine. So too did fervent debates continue about the threat of violent youth to Jewish politics. The year had also seen dozens of dramatic turns during the murder trial, including accusations of false testimony, fabricated evidence and an initial death sentence for Stavsky from Haifa’s district court. Ultimately, however, the Chief Justice of Mandate Palestine’s Supreme Court found that the testimony of Arlosoroff’s wife, though reliable, was not sufficiently corroborated by other evidence. When Polish Jewish newspapers reported that the murder charges against Stavsky and his

139 “Tsiyonistishe executive obgenumen bay di betarim dos rekht tsu bekumen sertifikatn: der sharfer kampfs-onzog fun revizionistisher velt-laytungen” Haynt 26 February 1934. 140 “Onfal fun di ‘linke’ oyf Jabotinskin: der shendlikher skandal in’m kongres-binyen—‘linke provotsirn a geshleg’. Politsey arestirt dem poaley tsiyonist berkowicz.” Moment 25 August 1933. 141 Ibid.

225 co-defendants had been withdrawn, they confessed to their readers that they were exhausted by their coverage of not only the trial, but also of the internecine violence within Jewish communities throughout Poland. Reporters hoped that with the verdict cast and Stavsky freed, tensions between the Zionist Left and Revisionists would subside, and that calm would return to Jewish communities in Poland and the Yishuv.142 The journalists, however, had good reason to be skeptical. Despite repeated claims that they were the victims, rather than perpetrators, of youth movement violence, leaders on both the Zionist Left and Right continued to offer deliberately ambiguous instructions to their followers about whether or not they could use force against their opponents. The Histadrut, for example, published a circular in March 1934 entitled “The War against Revisionism,” that urged its members to “use all of the strength of our organization and its physical might” to “force [Revisionists] into [a state of] fear and inferiority”—and, at one and the same time, “to weigh deeds and their consequences” and “refrain from individual and group guerrilla attacks (even if they are justified).”143 Jabotinsky similarly offered instructions that both condoned and condemned the use of force. In one typical article that responded to claims in the winter of 1934 that Betar members were launching attacks on Labor Zionist groups in Poland and Palestine, he wrote, “I demand from my young comrades: stop… it is in our interest that the custom to beat other Jews should remain a ‘monopoly’ of the Red camp.” Jabotinsky’s call to his members to refrain from violence, however, was followed by the following lines: One can’t live only with the theory [of nonviolence] in a time when other Jews are beating my young comrades every week in every town in every colony of our Homeland, the Land of Israel….It would be foolish, in such a situation, to demand a humanly impossible moral principle: Let them hit you, let them even hit your friends, and sit and be silent. I say openly, in such a situation, with such people around us, the entire question of physical repression loses its ‘ethical’character.144 Much like his claims about the inability of democratic ideals to be upheld in an age of political crisis, Jabotinsky was arguing that, in the name of self-defense, ethical considerations were rendered null and void.

142 See, for example, A.S. Lirik “Stavsky als Korbn” Haynt 20 July, 1934; B. Yehoashson, “Genug!” 24 July 1934; Tsvi Prilutski, “Di shtim fun doyres” Moment 21 July 1934. 143 “Ha-milhama be-revizionizm: maskanot she-nitkablu be-merkaz mifleget po’alei erets-israel ve-ushru be-mo’atsa” Davar 26 March 1934. 144 Jabotinsky, “A perek emes fun erts-yisroel” Moment 26 January 1934.

226 While Jabotinsky remained the master of offering implicit approval for actions he would never explicitly condone, his strategy of providing deliberately ambiguous instructions was producing unintended results. Despite Betar’s frequent condemnations of the violent rhetoric of the Zionist Left in the months since Arlosoroff’s death, Stavsky’s trial led many Betar members to further support the biryonim and their violent ethos. The bond between Stavsky and the biryonim in the Jewish public’s imagination was sealed in July 1933, when the British police arrested Achimeir and accused him of being an accomplice to the murder. While Stavsky was released in August 1934, Achimeir was sentenced to twenty-two months of hard labor. Portrayed by Betar’s press as a martyr for the youth movement, Achimeir’s popularity surged. In Warsaw, Uri Zvi Greenberg used his colleague’s imprisonment alongside Stavsky as an opportunity to further promote the biryonim’s revolutionary program. In the final moments of Betar’s national conference in Warsaw in October 1933, he dramatically entered the room, rose to the podium and declared, “Jewish pacifism is the greatest lie of history” and added, “the biryonim who sit in jail must serve as a symbol of true Jewish liberators.”145 The false liberators, Greenberg implied, were those within the ranks of the Revisionist movement who refused to see revolutionary violence as the only means to achieve a Jewish state. Jabotinsky’s public responses to these developments did little to make Uri Zvi Grinberg’s demands less popular. Throughout the Arlosoroff murder trial, Jabotinsky had referred to the imprisoned biryonim as “my beloved sons” [b’nei libi].146 Nor did Jabotinsky’s continued battle against the Zionist Organization help to stop the rising growth of support for the biryonim. The very same month that Greenberg delivered his demands to Betar’s conference, Jabotinsky circulated a command to Betar members that urged them to refuse immigration certificates offered to them by the Zionist Organization and seek out instead alternative ways to immigrate to Palestine. When the Zionist Organization was informed of the command, designed to diminish their power and prestige among young Jews, they announced that they were ceasing to issue certificates to Betar members altogether. Refusing to renege on his command, Jabotinsky unwittingly intensified the sense of discouragement Betar members felt about the prospects of

145 “Der tsuzamenfar fun brit trumpeldor in varshe” Haynt 9 October 1933. 146 See, for example, Jabotinsky to Joseph Klausner, 22 April 1934; “A brif fun dem arlosorof protses” Haynt 8 May 1934.

227 peaceful change in Palestine through immigration. In their despair, the biryonim’s insistence that illegal immigration and acts of terror would be the only way to bring about a Jewish state became more compelling. As the biryonim’s popularity rose, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between their political platform and that of Betar’s journalists. Whereas previous articles on self-defense published by the youth movement’s newspapers largely focused on marching drills and physical exercise regimens, Betar’s journalists began to give pride of place to articles on how to conceal weapons and improvise during combat.147 Paying tribute to this change in a December 1933 issue of Betar’s journal for instructors, a member of Betar’s Head Command insisted, “National extremism without mercy or compromise—that is the chief characteristic of Betar… Betar is an extremist, revolutionary organization, and we shouldn’t be embarrassed by these terms… So long as Betar fans the flames of extremism, the fire of a national revolutionary ethos, the movement will grow, from soldier to soldier.”148 By the winter of 1934, reports were arriving to Jabotinsky that splinter cells were emerging within Betar clubs, dedicated solely to the biryonim’s program.149 Although the biryonim and their supporters continued to publicly pledge allegiance and obedience to Jabotinsky, it was clear that they were providing interpretations of Jabotinsky to Betar members that rendered obsolete the Revisionist leader’s more temperate political comments. Jabotinsky was nearly exclusively being portrayed as a warrior; Lerner, for example, justified his call for revolutionary activity by noting that “The Head of Betar said that if it was possible to bring about the redemption of Israel with the power of the devil, he would not recoil from doing so… And if ‘national extremism’ is the name of the Devil—may his name be blessed.”150

147 “Hahahshara Ha-hagnatit be-betar” Ha-Medina 10 April 1933; Ha-militarizatsya shel ha-atletika ha- kala” Ha-Medina 30 April 1933; “Targilei mishtar mefuzar” Madrikh Betar May 1933; Y. Halperin, She’elat Ha-bitahon ha-ivri: Ikronei ha-strategiya ve-ha-taktika shel ha-haganah ha-ivrit (Warsaw: Remona, 1934). 148 Zelig Lerner, “Kana’ut” Madrikh Betar (vol.6-7) December 1933, p.15. 149 Vl. Jabotinsky “Davar le-betarim” Ha-medina 17 January 1934; Jabotinsky to Betar members 24 January 1934. 150 Lerner, p.15.

228 Letters sent by Jabotinsky to colleagues in 1934 not only point to the Revisionist leader’s growing weariness about the political strategies he had employed the previous year to dismantle the Revisionist Executive and respond to the violent clashes between Betar and the Zionist Left. They also reveal that he was calling into question the very linguistic style—perfected with his ambiguous construction of youth—that had propelled his political prose for so long. Urging a former member of the London Revisionist Executive to return to the movement, Jabotinsky confessed that the “lack of clear regulations for the party” was the “decisive factor” in disagreements within the movement. New regulations, he promised, would be “based on the belief in the holiness and justice of democratic foundations, upon which our generation was educated until this very day, and which they carry with pride.”151 Yet even as Jabotinsky strained to articulate, as clearly as possible, his democratic character, and that of the movement, he could not escape the trappings and temptations of the authoritarian leadership model upon which he had relied. The increasing aggravation Jabotinsky expressed to biryonim supporters in Palestine had as much to do with their political activity as it did with the exhaustion he experienced performing the role of a democratic leader while simultaneously demanding total obedience. Explaining to the biryonim that his instructions were non-negotiable, he wrote, “[i]nsofar as you yourself have insisted in calling me the leader (for the sake of Heaven, don’t use this ugly foreign word, it mimics foreign examples that I hate with all my heart!)…I have been forced to draw attention to the fact that the essence of my demand you refused to fulfill.”152 Several months later, he wrote that their articles calling for violence against the British were a “terrible violation of the tradition of freedom and democracy in Revisionist journalism, a tradition that is set for eternity and that you must submit to in every line and every word.”153 If the anger that he had expressed in the previous letter about being “forced” to give a command was any indication, Jabotinsky took notice of the fact that calling for the biryonim to “submit” to democracy in fact undermined the democratic values he claimed to uphold.

151 Jabotinsky to Julius Brutzkus, Israel Trivus, Dr. Schwartzmann, 15 January 1934. 152 Jabotinsky to Yehoshua Yeivin, 7 March 1934. 153 Jabotinsky to the editorial board of Ha-Yarden 2 October 1934.

229 While Stavsky’s release was greeted by all in the Revisionist movement as a triumph for their party, its ideological significance for the movement was a matter of considerable debate. Portrayed as Achimeir’s ward, Stavsky could have easily been turned into a symbol of victory for the biryonim. Unsurprisingly, Jabotinsky hoped instead that Stavsky’s release would draw attention to the tireless campaign Jabotinsky had waged on his behalf. Through newspaper articles examining the courtroom evidence and letters to prominent leaders in the Yishuv and England, Jabotinsky hoped that he could prove to his membership that his performance of the role of democratic leader and political statesmen would bring far greater benefit to the movement than performing the roles of rebel warrior and dictator.154 In the aftermath of Stavsky’s release, a new opportunity arrived for Jabotinsky to make his case: a letter from a representative of the Zionist Organization hinted at the possibility that they would initiate a call for peace between the Zionist Left and Right.155 Attentive to public opinion about youth movement violence in Poland and Palestine, and eager to keep the Revisionist movement’s revolutionary faction in check, Jabotinsky decided to preempt the Zionist Organization’s peace initiative. In late July 1934, he published a call for Labor Zionists and Revisionists to put an end to their violent clashes and negotiate, in his words, a “modus vivendi.”156 The prospect of negotiations did more than just provide Jabotinsky with the opportunity to present himself as the broker for peace and order in the Zionist movement. A negotiation, he hoped, would also result in the Zionist Organization issuing immigration certificates to Betar’s members once again, and, in so doing, lessen the temptation of Betar members to endorse illegal immigration and revolt against British rule.157 In the last two weeks of October, Jabotinsky met with Ben-Gurion in London in order to flesh out the conditions for the agreement. Significantly, the incendiary language that both Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky had employed throughout the trial in their youth movements’ publications was entirely absent from their correspondence to one another in

154 For articles, see “Durkhgefaln in shpekulatsye” Der Moment 23 June 1933; “In di shpurn fun tel-aviver oysforshung” Der Moment 28 June 1933; “Di tel-aviver beylisade” 11 August 1933. For letters, see Jabotinsky to Horace Samuel 20 September 1933; Jabotinsky to William Rappard 6 July 1934; Jabotinsky to Rabbi Kook 6 September 1934. 155 Jabotinsky to Shlomo Jacobi, 31 July 1934. 156 Jabotinsky, “Di, vos hobn geratevet” Moment 27 July 1934; Jabotinsky to the Executive of Mapai 31 July 1934; “Mit farnunft” Moment 19 August 1934. 157 See, for example, Jabotinsky to , 17 October 1934.

230 the months that followed. Instead, Jabotinsky gushed to Ben-Gurion about how pleased he was to have received a letter from him that began with “My dear friend.” Jabotinsky’s attention to language in these letters underscored his exhaustion with the polemics he had conducted the previous year. Referring to Ben-Gurion’s warm greeting, Jabotinsky confessed, “I’ve already forgotten this language,” and quickly added, “it’s surely a sign and prophecy for a new era, and I will try with all my efforts to ensure that this era will arise, or at least will begin.”158 Equally significant were the ways in which Jabotinsky used the letter to subtly critique the trappings of youth movement politics both leaders had adopted. Although, Jabotinsky wrote, he was skeptical that “ordinary” Histadrut members shared Ben-Gurion’s willingness to negotiate, “it’s not important, what’s important is that…the minds that put the finishing touches on the ideology, the minds that are in the elite of the movement understand you… ”159 Jabotinsky’s statement about who ultimately mattered in the world of politics was a far cry from his claims to Betar that his greatest skill as a political leader was to both embody and pay heed to their voices. Just one week after his fifty-fourth birthday, Jabotinsky published a circular to branches of the Revisionist movement informing them—to their great surprise— that a preliminary agreement had been reached concerning violence and labor competition between Revisionist and Histadrut workers. In clear, blunt and stern prose, he insisted, “we emphasize the need to remove violence from our national life—in all conditions, no matter what. Now this idea will be accepted by all factions in the Zionist movement, and your honor demands that you become the more faithful keepers of this cultural law.”160 For a fleeting moment, it appeared as if Jabotinsky’s swift transformation from tireless warrior against socialism to peace negotiator would be welcomed by Betar’s leaders in both Poland and Palestine. In the week following Jabotinsky’s letter, Betar leaders pledged that they would accept the agreement and carry it through completely, despite the fact that they were skeptical of the Zionist Left’s intentions.161 But promises to uphold the agreement quickly dissipated. A week after Jabotinsky proposed the agreement to his members, Revisionist leaders in Palestine informed Jabotinsky that they

158 Jabotinsky to David Ben-Gurion 29 October 1934. 159 Ibid. 160 Jabotinsky to the National Branches of the Revisionist movement 2 November 1934. 161 “Prese shtimen” Ha-Medina 2 December 1934.

231 refused to accept the conditions he and Ben-Gurion had established in the agreement regarding worker relations in Palestine.162 Two weeks later, Ha-Medina began publishing articles describing how the Histadrut’s leadership had rejected the call to end violence.163 Jabotinsky’s letter to Palestine’s Revisionist leadership urging them to reconsider was to no avail.164 With both the leadership of the Zionist Left and Right rejecting the initial agreements forged by their leaders, the politics of behind-closed-doors statesmanship, negotiation and compromise appeared powerless before the hatred that both leaders had fomented among their ranks throughout the previous year. Embarrassed by the reaction of his followers, Jabotinsky informed his longtime supporter Shlomo Jacobi that he had all but given up on the prospects of reaching a lasting agreement, and that he would spend the remainder of his time trying to salvage negotiations with the Zionist Organization to issue Betar members immigration certificates once more.165 Here, as well, Jabotinsky’s efforts at political statesmanship, designed to restore the faith of his youth movement’s members in political progress through legal immigration, produced few results. The Zionist Organization, he reported, continued to postpone conversations with him about granting Betar members immigration certificates.166 With the world conferences of both Betar and the Revisionist movement rapidly approaching in Kraków, it appeared as if Jabotinsky would be facing his movements’ delegates empty-handed. The stalled negotiations with both Ben-Gurion and the Zionist Executive would make his task at the conference to justify his calls to quell internecine violence, as well as the revolutionary calls within the movement, all the more difficult. With Achimeir’s popularity at an all-time high, Jabotinsky knew that the conference, held only steps away from the crypt where Poland’s kings and queens were buried, could potentially crown a future leader for Betar. To retain his standing in the youth movement, Jabotinsky was faced with the daunting, nearly impossible task of defending his ability to represent youth while simultaneously publicly undermining the provocative political rhetoric that had defined his youth politics for years.

162 Jabotinsky to Pinhas Rutenberg, 12 November 1934. 163 Yohanan Ponadbinski, “Misaviv la-heskem” Ha-Medina 21 December 1934. 164 Jabotinsky to Avraham Weinschel 16 November 1934. 165 Jabotinsky to Shlomo Jacobi, 15 November 1934. 166 Jabotinsky to Pinhas Rutenberg 12 December 1934.

232 Jabotinsky did all he could to make his case in the three days of speeches that preceded the general debate. On the evening of Tuesday January 8, 1935, he walked onto the stage of Kraków’s Stary Teatr, located in the heart of the city’s main square. Before an audience of two hundred delegates, two thousand members of the public, and hundreds more crowded around the theater, he took aim at the biryonim’s calls for revolt. His arguments not only critiqued the biryonim’s position, but also the very ambivalent, contradictory prose that had typified the Revisionist movement’s youth discourse for years. “The foundation of the Revisionist movement’s politics,” he explained, “is logic. If we demand from the Mandate Government that it should introduce a government that favors Jewish colonization, we can’t, at the same time, present the impression that any one of us wants to do away with them.”167 The next day, at the opening of Betar’s conference (which consisted of nearly all the same delegates as the previous day), Jabotinsky needed to prove that his plea for logic did not also amount to a rejection of Betar’s military ethos. From the moment he walked into the conference room, delegates could see him making his case. For the first time in his political career, he was not wearing his iconic tuxedo at a conference. Instead, he was dressed in Betar’s uniform, providing visual proof that he was a youth in spirit.168 After being unanimously “elected” by Betar’s delegates to maintain his position as the head of Betar, he declared, “I feel a great love for the Revisionist movement, but an even greater love for Betar. The Revisionist movement are the branches of a tree, and Betar are its roots.”169 In the speech that followed, he transposed the revolutionary rhetoric of the biryonim upon his own political accomplishments: “What does the word “putsch” mean? Putsch means revival…Often, we have to begin by carrying out such acts because we have to take a leap [shprung], even when we aren’t sure whether this leap will work…we are a revolutionary movement, and revolutionary movements must go through experimental phases…We must be conquerors and take what we can take. Betar was not founded to be passive. [It was founded for] conquest, battle, and old ideals for new achievements.170

167 “Fayerlekhe erefnung fun der 6-ter konferentz fun alveltlekhn ‘brit ha-tzohar’ Konferentz tsaytung 9 January 1935, p.7. 168 “Der 2-ter alveltlekher kinus betar” Konferentz tsaytung 9 January 1935, p.2. 169 “Di val fun rosh Betar” Konferentz tsaytung 9 January 1935, p.3. 170 Ibid. Emphasis mine.

233 Jabotinsky’s description of the putsch aimed to prove to Betar’s members that he did not want to diminish the movement’s revolutionary fervor, so long as it was directed towards the “old ideals” for which he stood. No matter how intricate, Jabotinsky’s performance did little to prevent the unprecedented onslaught of criticism from within Betar’s ranks that was unleashed upon him during the general debate the following evening. The first speaker, a Betar delegate from Romania, set the tone by declaring, “this is the first time I feel bad attending a Revisionist conference.”171 His worst fears, he continued, had materialized: Revisionist leaders were attempting to use Stavsky’s release from jail to seek peace and compromise with their enemies—a move, he added, that was no more than an opportunistic bid to gain the approval of the mainstream Jewish public. He then turned directly to Jabotinsky; “One makes peace after a victory, but after an attack, or when you’re overcome by exhaustion, is that the reason for peace? Does one not believe anymore in our stubborn resilience? Simply for certificates, one resigned from our battle with the Zionist movement, which Jabotinsky once told us to “break.”172 The delegate’s comments not only drew attention to the fact that Jabotinsky had betrayed the very polemics he had employed for years within the movement. His reference to Jabotinsky’ exhaustion, in contrast to Betar’s “stubborn resilience” also drew attention to the fact that their leader was aging. Betar’s leaders from Poland echoed these claims. “We stand firm with our leader Jabotinsky,” a delegate from Warsaw began. “But one has to see the situation clearly. In the movement there are old men, who are looking for comfort and rest. But we want to lead the movement on revolutionary paths.”173 It was only fitting that the most eloquent of Betar’s leaders to criticize both Jabotinsky’s negotiations with the Zionist Left and his critiques of the biryonim came from the very same city in which Stavsky was born and raised. At sixteen years old, Menachem Begin had joined Betar in 1929 after four years in Haszomer Hacair. He was quickly rising through the leadership ranks of the movement, serving first as Betar’s regional commander of the eastern region of Polesie. Two years later, upon completing a

171 “Di general debate” Konferentz tsaytung 11 January 1935, p.1. 172 Ibid. 173 Ibid.

234 high school degree in his town’s Polish gymnasium, he moved to Warsaw to begin studies in law. By 1933, he was as a member of Betar’s Head Command in Warsaw. Despite the lanky, gaunt appearance of the twenty-year-old, Betar’s leaders saw him as a compelling enough presence to enlist him to travel throughout the country to promote the movement at Zionist gatherings.174 Impressed with his rhetorical skills, the editors of the Revisionist movement’s journals gave him the opportunity to contribute articles that same year, and to publish a pamphlet on Betar’s ideology, directed towards Jewish parents, one year later.175 Of the few works of prose that bore Begin’s name prior to the conference, none of them fully embraced the revolutionary rhetoric of the biryonim. Nonetheless, they provide useful clues to understanding why it was he chose to critique Jabotinsky at the Kraków conference. Beginning to publish at the height of the Stavsky affair, Begin devoted his articles to the increasing desperation of Jewish youth in the face of immigration restrictions, the rising threat of the Jewish Left towards Polish Jewish youth, and the need for Betar’s leadership to exercise greater discipline. For a young leader who pledged that Betar would “rescue the souls of Jewish youth from the red drug which they [the Left] wants to poison them with,” the peace agreement understandably came as a shock.176 News that the negotiations were stalled likely aggravated Begin, who had advocated in his articles for Betar members to “bite their lips,”177 refrain from using empty phrases, and journey instead on “a new, wide, unpaved road of national, redemptive deeds.”178 Taking the floor at the conference, Begin opened his remarks by taking aim at the ideological ambiguity that had characterized Betar’s youth politics for several years. After calling on every delegate to address fundamental questions about the nature of their movement, he insisted, “Our position on all questions must be effective and clear.” He continued by critiquing the negotiations between the Revisionists, the Histadrut and the

174 See, for example, “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne n.6 za czerwiec 1933,” Urząd Wojewódzki w Brześciu, Wojewoda Podelski AAN/MSW/1183/0/16 p. 96; “Listy z kraju” Trybuna Narodowa 2 March 1934. 175 Menachem Begin, “A nayer transparent” Di velt 1 December 1933; Begin, Der Betar un zayn vort tsu di idishe eltern (Warsaw: 1934); “A vikhtiger etap” Ha-medina 16 February 1933; “Unzer matone” Ha- medina 25 October 1934. 176 Begin, Betar un zayn vort tsu di idishe eltern, p.6. 177 Begin, “Unzer matone” Ha-medina 25 October 1934. 178 “A vikhtiger etap” Ha-medina 16 February 1933.

235 Zionist Organization as “diplomatic gambles” that “in the real reality [in di eymese virklikhkayt] cannot be realized.” Turning directly to Jabotinsky, he framed his critique of the leader as the expression of an unbridgeable gap between the attitudes and behaviors of a father and his sons. “Mr. President may forget the attacks of Ben-Gurion…that is his own prerogative. But we, his children—we will never forget how much filth Ben-Gurion used [benutzt] against the president—our father.” While this pledge of filial loyalty allowed Begin to present his critiques as a defense of Jabotinsky, the comments that followed cast Jabotinsky’s authority into question. While insisting that he wasn’t a maximalist, Begin continued, “We must, however, recognize that besides the president, we have yet another teacher, who has already transformed into a legend. Let us not efface this very legend, because it is a legend of suffering and pain, of heroism and resilience, and of imprisonment.”179 By implicitly casting Achimeir as a direct competitor of Jabotinsky, Begin sought to make clear to the Revisionist leader that his opposition to the biryonim would jeopardize the hold he had on the Betar youth movement. If the aftermath of the conference was any indication, Jabotinsky took Begin’s words to heart. Eager to prove that he had no intention of rescinding his support for maximalist leaders, he published an article in Moment in early February that began, “at the Kraków conference there were a few Maximalists; too few for my taste. Every one of us has maximalist sentiments… and what they say and what they do is often (but not always) a true echo of everyone’s feelings.”180 The article assured readers that Jabotinsky would encourage the biryonim to promote their views within the Revisionist movement, so long as they did not call for the formation of a separate organization. It was his approach to the biryonim’s promotion of violence that most underscored his increased resignation to their ideals. After the article criticized the biryonim’s provocative language against the British Mandate—dubbed by Jabotinsky as “stylistic heroism”—Jabotinsky wrote, “If a maximalist does something, they have to be prepared to suffer alone; the party won’t take responsibility… if someone used their fists in a situation in which it is illegal to do so, or if they broke someone’s bones, when one should not—he [the biryon]

179 “General debate: hemshekh” Konferentz tsaytung 13 January 1934, pp.2-3. 180 Jabotinsky, “Vegn maximalizm” Moment 1 February 1935.

236 should know exactly what he’s doing and not fear to suffer [the consequences].”181 Although Jabotinsky’s promise of silence made clear that he had absolved himself of responsibility for their behavior, it simultaneously implied that he would not publicly castigate biryonim supporters who engaged in acts of violence. Equally significant was the way in which the conference’s events were covered by the youth movement’s national journals. No direct reference to the general debate, or to any ideological discord whatsoever, appeared in Betar’s press. Jabotinsky was likely supportive of the journals’ efforts to present his youth movement as more unified than ever before. When one moves beyond the political prose of Betar’s journals to look instead at Jabotinsky’s correspondence, a different story emerges. At first, Jabotinsky echoed his party line of unity and strength. To friends and supporters, he insisted that the conference was an invigorating experience—enough to make the negotiations’ failure a blessing rather than a curse for the movement.182 Letters to his sister assured her that the biryonim did not pose a threat to his political vision for the Revisionist movement.183 The decisions made under his supervision by Betar’s Head Command seemed to bear out these claims. Menachem Begin was promoted to be the head of Betar’s “Organizational Department,” which would determine the structure of Betar groups throughout Poland. Responding to an angry letter sent by Propes in mid-February, Jabotinsky even seemed resigned to the fact that a power shift was occurring within Betar and that he was betraying his previous vision for the movement. “How,” Jabotinsky asked Propes, “are you not ashamed to write that I apparently ‘don’t take your opinion into account’? I do indeed take it into consideration…but even I cannot always behave according to my worldview… ”184 By the time Jabotinsky wrote this letter in February 1935, he was in Montreal, at the beginning of a speaking tour lasting several months, with the clamor of Revisionist movement politics in Poland no more than a distant echo.

181 Ibid. 182 Jabotinsky to Jonah Freulich, 7 January 1935; Jabotinsky to Tamar Jabotinsky-Kop 7 January 1935; Jabotinsky to Pinhas Rutenberg 25 February 1935. 183 Jabotinsky to Tamar Jabotinsky-Kop 17 January 1935. 184 Jabotinsky to Aharon Zvi Propes, 11 February 1935.

237 As Jabotinsky wove his way through a series of cities on ’s East Coast, he was met with half-empty auditoriums. His name, he complained, just didn’t have the “magnetic attraction” that it carried in Eastern Europe.185 Not that he minded the calm. In the same letter addressing the position of the biryonim in the movement, Jabotinsky told his sister that his trip to the United States would give him time to rest; when he left the auditoriums, he enthused, “no one will be permitted to come towards me.”186 Time away from the political chaos of the past two years would allow him to write his autobiography, which he jokingly referred to as his “mythography.”187 Tellingly, the autobiography ended with his imprisonment in Akko in 1920—an experience that had given him legendary status within the Zionist movement as a youthful rebel.188 He also found time to complete a semi-autobiographical novel, Piatero, about a group of upper middle class Jewish adolescents in fin-de-siècle Russia.189 Perhaps it was in writing these works—each in their own way reflecting his own youth, long gone by—that Jabotinsky began to give himself permission to admit to the failings of the previous months. His unlikely confidant was none other than David Ben-Gurion. From Chicago, Jabotinsky wrote: I don’t know if I’m going to send this letter once it’s completed…perhaps you’ll read these lines with eyes that have changed. I fear I have also changed somewhat. I’ll admit, for example, that when I received the news of the postponement of the agreement, there was a sort of inner whisper within me that said these words—‘thank God we’ve been exempted from this’…And yet…I learned in London to value the man Ben-Gurion and his works…There are generations, now, that don’t know your [ideological] meanderings and did not participate in your quest for truth…There seems to be a new characteristic among our present-day youth, Jewish and Gentile alike, who refrain from delving into matters and are inclined towards ‘yesses’ or ‘no’s’ that are bold, simple, basic and brutal. Of these two threads they seek the one that is thicker, or more shiny; and that love which in the past moved you to moderate, and moderate once more the proportions [you put] in the [ideological] combinations, they call it casuistry or a lack of might—or even worse. With what then will you fight this brutality, with what concoction? Will you try to teach them your beliefs? I doubt whether this generation is capable of understanding them. This generation is very ‘monistic’—Perhaps this is no compliment, but it is definitely a fact. Or perhaps, you won’t fight them, you’ll go with the stream [of the movement], in part hoping

185 Jabotinsky to Shlomo Jacobi 18 February 1935. 186 Jabotinsky to Tamar Jabotinsky-Kop 17 January 1935. 187 Jabotinsky to Shlomo Zaltsman 19 March 1935. 188 Completed in 1935, Jabotinsky’s autobiography first appeared in Shlomo Zaltsman, ed., Ktavim nivharim: golah ve-hitbolelut (Tel Aviv: 1936); It was serialized in Poland’s main Yiddish-language Revisionist in 1939; “Di geshikhte fun mayn lebn” Unzer Velt 3 March 1939-14 July 1939. 189 Jabotinsky, Piatero (Paris, ARS, 1936).

238 that the stream will reach a point that is so absurd that it will cure itself, or in part [you believe you’ll be] going with the stream without this hope?190

Although Jabotinsky was addressing Ben-Gurion’s relationship to the Histadrut’s membership, he may as well have been describing the challenge that he felt bore upon him that winter. Plans were underway to create the New Zionist Organization; under Jabotinsky’s direction, it would compete with the Zionist Organization for the support of the Jewish masses. Would he pretend to renounce his democratic persona, his occasional calls for restraint and his penchant for diplomacy, all the while hoping that the Maximalist’s program would quickly unravel when put into action? Would he fully accept the Maximalist platform without looking back? Or would he ultimately reject, in no uncertain terms, the Maximalist’s calls for revolutionary violence, and leave the world of politics? Whatever choice he would take, one thing was clear. Jabotinsky’s once firm belief that he possessed the power to steer the course of his youth movement by using provocative political prose had been shaken. The final phrase of an article written by him in the previous year in Moment captured it best: “the children of Betar are children of iron—even stronger than the steel typewriter that raised them.”191

Whether these were words of praise or lament was, as always, left for his readers to decide.

190 Jabotinsky to David Ben Gurion, 30 March 1935. 191 Jabotinsky, “Ayzn” Moment 11 March 1934.

239

CONCLUSION

Shalom Tabacznik would die with Jabotinsky’s name upon his lips. This was, at least, how the twenty-five year old Betar member envisioned his death when he wrote to friends from his prison cell in Palestine.1 In the final days leading up to his execution in the summer of 1938, Tabacznik did all he could to let people know that his entire life had been devoted to obeying Jabotinsky’s commands. In letters to family and fellow Betar members, and in notes scribbled on the walls of his prison cell, he insisted that Jabotinsky’s poems and articles had offered clear guidelines for his life and impending death. Ten months beforehand, he heeded Jabotinsky’s plea during a public campaign in Poland for Jews to emigrate en masse from the country. Leaving his hometown of Łuck, a city in Poland’s eastern borderlands, Tabacznik began a journey taken by some twenty thousand Polish Jews in the 1930s to immigrate illegally to Palestine.2 Once he arrived, he obeyed Jabotinsky’s instructions for newly arrived Betar members, and joined a small Revisionist work battalion in Rosh Pina, a Jewish settlement in the . When a friend was shot dead by an Arab assailant, Jabotinsky’s words once again inspired Tabacznik. Joined by two other Betar members, he threw grenades and fired shots towards a bus carrying twenty-four Arab civilians. Although Tabacznik’s mission was a failure—the grenades never went off, and the bus driver swerved in time to miss the bullets—he took comfort in the fact that he would be the first Jew to be executed by Mandate Palestine’s British authorities. To his mother and friends, he wrote, “I can’t tell you how happy I am that I’ve been given the chance to die in the Land of Israel…I never dreamed that I would die such a heroic death.”3 He would have likely been pleased with the fact that dozens of young Jews in Palestine spent the weeks following his execution trying to carry out reprisal attacks of their own. As members of the underground National Military Organization [Irgun Tsva’i Le’umi, Irgun], which officially claimed allegiance

1 JI/K16/1/3, p.14 2 Ya’akov Tuvi estimates that the Revisionist movement helped to bring approximately seventeen thousand illegal immigrants from Europe, mostly from Poland, between 1934-1940. See Tuvi, Milhama bli : ha-tenuah ha-tsionit ha-revizionistit ve-sugiyat ha-aliya le-erets yisra’el ba-shanim 1930-1940 (Jerusalem: Haifa University and Jabotinsky Institute, 2011), p.371. 3 Shalom Tabacznik to Rahel Tabacznik, 28 June 1938, JI/K16/1/3, p.18. This file includes all letters sent by Tabacznik in prison.

240 to Jabotinsky, they staged shooting attacks and set off bombs in Arab buses, marketplaces, and coffee shops. In one month alone, nearly ninety Arab civilians were killed. Much had changed in Europe and Palestine in the three years that had passed between the World Conference of Betar in Kraków and Shalom Tabacznik’s death. The Third Reich had taken control of Austria; with his gaze cast further eastward, Hitler soon after called for the mass mobilization of the German army. Day after day, German Jews faced new humiliating measures designed to exclude them from German society. At the time of Tabacznik’s death, they had been stripped of their rights to serve in the military, teach non-Jewish pupils, practice law and engage in many commercial services. In the years that followed Piłsudski’s death in 1935, the Polish government also adopted a slew of antisemitic measures designed to make Jews feel unwelcome in the country. Leading members of the ruling government bloc introduced legislation that sought to restrict Jewish employment, hoping that they could keep up with the Polish ethno-nationalist Right’s frequently violent economic campaigns against Jews. Although Jewish life in Europe looked increasingly grim, it was in Mandate Palestine that Jews faced the most immediate threat to their lives. The three-year Arab Revolt, launched in April 1936 as a general strike of Arab workers, increasingly took on the character of a popular guerrilla war against Palestine’s four hundred thousand Jews, who now made up one-third of the territory’s population. Armed with guns, grenades and bombs, Arab assailants conducted terrorist attacks against hundreds of Jewish civilians, hoping to destroy the Zionist movement in Palestine and push the British to halt Jewish immigration to the country. It was against this backdrop that the Jewish Military Organization, popularly known as the Irgun, decided in April 1937 to make it their official policy to conduct reprisal attacks. While Abraham Tehomi, the Irgun’s original leader who had led the underground organization since its establishment in 1931, abandoned the movement in the wake of this new policy, the majority of its fifteen hundred members—nearly all Revisionist men in their teens and twenties— remained within its fold.4 The Labor Zionist leadership in Palestine publicly condemned the Irgun’s activities and advocated instead for a policy of

4 Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940-1949 (London: Frank Cass, 1995), pp.30-32.

241 ‘self-restraint’ (havlaga), which entailed defending Jewish settlements against incursions but not attacking Arab civilians. They claimed that the Irgun’s activities would only further provoke Arab terror attacks and lead the British to ban Jewish immigration to the country.5 But as the revolt progressed, guerilla units associated with Labor Zionist groups began to conduct reprisal attacks that targeted Arab civilians, even as the Zionist Left continued to condemn the Irgun.6 Historians have described the years of the Arab Revolt (1936-1939) as a major turning point for the Zionist movement. For scholars like Anita Shapira and Uri Ben- Eliezer, these years saw the triumph in the Yishuv of a new military ethos, cultivated and promoted by a generation of young Jews born and raised in Palestine. In the words of Ben-Eliezer, theirs was an “ethos created by local experience.”7 When it came to finding a solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict, “native-born” Jews fashioned a new ideology drawn from their memories of “guarding the fields and crops, fighting with Arab children, [and] being given a weapon at the age of bar mitzvah.”8 Shapira, too, has argued that the late 1930s saw the formation of “the Jewish warrior as a cultural and social model and as a fact of life,” and that this model emerged from young “Palestinian Jews” whose forthrightness and lack of sophistication was “at the expense of [the] traditional Jewish compassion” of their parents.9 While historians of Revisionism argue that Zionism’s “military turn” emerged from Jabotinsky and his young followers, they have similarly used the concept of generational conflict as an explanatory device. According to Colin Shindler, between 1936 and 1939, Jabotinsky was forced by his young adherents in Betar to condone terrorist attacks against Arabs. In Shindler’s view, these years saw the triumph of the revolutionary “military Zionism” of youth, and the defeat of the “traditional Revisionism” guided by Jabotinsky’s commitment to diplomacy, order and democracy.10

5 Shapira, Land and Power, pp.248-249. 6 Ben-Eliezer, The Making of Israeli Militarism, pp.21-33. 7 Ibid., p.22. 8 Ibid. 9 Shapira, pp.219, 263. 10 Shindler, The Triumph of Military Zionism, pp. 199-223.

242 The story told in this dissertation about the rise of the Zionist Right calls into question these historical accounts in several ways. By highlighting the dynamics that shaped the construction of Betar’s culture, this study undermines the notion that a dichotomy existed between “traditional Revisionism” and revolutionary militarism in the first place. From its very inception, Betar’s journals presented an array of interpretive possibilities to its members, who constituted the vast majority of the Revisionist movement’s membership. Jabotinsky deliberately inserted phrases and slogans into his party writings that spoke of revolutionary battle, the redemptive value of spilling blood, and the necessity of violence—all the while claiming, when he so desired, that his movement would only resort to violence as a means of self defense. Jabotinsky was not oblivious, as some scholars have implied, to the interpretive possibilities contained within his prose. He firmly believed that the contradictions and ambiguities that were the very essence of Betar’s discursive world would give his party the power to fight on as many political fronts as possible. The dissertation also highlights how Jabotinsky’s ability to exploit widespread fears about generational conflict and the nature of “youth” proved crucial to his political career. By portraying his increasingly authoritarian and bellicose political choices as the result of pressure from young followers whose “generation” was utterly different from his own, Jabotinsky believed he could retain the democratic and morally scrupulous persona he so deeply cherished. Thus, he could write anguished letters to British officials that warned of his inability to convince Jewish youth to embrace his commitment to democracy and peace, all the while delivering speeches to Betar members that not only sanctioned but commanded them to engage in acts of violence. The events surrounding Shalom Tabacznik’s death and its aftermath vividly illustrate how the proclamations and practices of Jabotinsky and his followers between 1922 and 1935 served as a template for Betar’s response to the Arab Revolt. Like other Betar members coming of age in Poland, Tabacznik, who had joined Betar in 1928, was encouraged to “translate” Jabotinsky’s ambiguous prose in ways that best matched his own political inclinations. When he scribbled lines from Betar’s anthem on the walls of his prison cell, he avoided its second verse, which called for chivalrous behavior. Instead, he wrote the anthem’s third verse, which urged Betar’s members to “die or to conquer the

243 mountain.”11 Well after Tabacznik’s death, Jabotinsky’s prose would continue to be selectively read by the Irgun’s proponents. The underground movement’s Yiddish- language newspaper in Poland, for example, included articles that described Jabotinsky’s philosophy as “two eyes for one eye and an entire mouth of teeth for one tooth,” and quoted Jabotinsky’s description of the Irgun as “the strongest form of protest” for the Jewish people.12 Any hesitations previously expressed by Jabotinsky about conducting reprisal attacks were nowhere to be found.13 These examples, like others provided throughout the dissertation, highlight the crucial role that supporters of the Zionist Right played in determining the ideological formation and development of the Revisionist movement. Jabotinsky, for his part, continued to issue deliberately contradictory and ambiguous instructions to his followers. At the fourth World Conference of Betar, held in Warsaw in September 1938, he publicly scolded the now twenty-five year old Menachem Begin for his demand to cut from Betar’s oath the phrase “I will only use my strength for defense.” Jabotinsky referred to Begin’s call to use force as the sole means to “conquer the homeland” as “the squeaking of a door, with no sense and no benefit.”14 This exchange has since been quoted by historians in order to portray the conference as a showdown between two worldviews—one, endorsing attacks that targeted civilians, and the other, opposing it.15 These scholars correctly point out that Jabotinsky occasionally clashed with leaders and supporters of the Irgun, particularly when he felt that his power to dictate the behavior of his followers was being undermined. Nonetheless, they miss two crucial points. First, Jabotinsky’s response to Begin never included any moral objections to unprovoked military actions against Palestine’s Arab population. His objections were exclusively strategic: he pointed out that Arab militias were better armed, and that focusing solely on underground military activities would discourage the British government from offering the Revisionist movement support. Furthermore, Jabotinsky

11 JI/K16/1/3, p.25. 12 See “A nay sefer vert itst tsugeshribn tsum tanakh” Di Tat 6 December 1938; “Ze’ev Jabotinsky tsum folk vegn ‘irgun’” Di Tat 16 May 1939. 13“Notitzn” Der Moment 26 June 1936. Jabotinsky only publicly expressed reservations about rejecting the policy of Havlaga in the spring and summer months of 1936. See Yosef Kister, Tagar u-magen: Ze’ev Jabotinsky ve-ha’etzel (Tel Aviv: Hotsa’at misdar al shem ze’ev Jabotinsky, 2004), p.25. 14 Ha-kinus ha-olami ha-shlishi le-betar (Bucharest: Hotsa’at Shilton Betar, 1940), pp.58-63. 15 Shindler, pp.206-212; Shapira, p.244.

244 made sure, as he had done in the past, to offer the conference’s participants another version of himself to obey. At a banquet held in Shalom Tabacznik’s honor that very same evening, Jabotinsky presented an approach to guerilla violence that radically differed from the one he had articulated in his confrontation with Begin. In his speech to the conference delegates, Jabotinsky proclaimed Tabacznik to be Betar’s ambassador; “he arrived to show the entire world what our movement is. Not only in worldview and spirit, but also in real deeds.”16 Addressing the deceased Tabacznik, Jabotinsky then declared, “I, as head of Betar give you…and to your two friends the command to go the way of the King and do what you did.”17 With these words, Jabotinsky provided his followers—including Menachem Begin, who would soon replace Propes as Head Commander of Betar— permission to believe that he sanctioned terrorist attacks that targeted Arab civilians. The same ambiguities and contradictions in Jabotinsky’s political writing outlined in the chapters of this dissertation made their way into the instructions he gave to Irgun operatives in Palestine. In one of the rare moments in which Jabotinsky voiced concerns about pre-meditated attacks against civilians, he commanded Irgun leaders that “when possible don’t go into areas where women normally congregate” and added “during defense it is impossible to distinguish between the sexes.”18 The Irgun’s leaders and members merely had to look to Jabotinsky’s prose in the 1920s and early 1930s to know that the boundaries distinguishing between defensive and offensive attacks were permeable. Until his death at the age of sixty in 1940, Jabotinsky would continue to present his followers with numerous possibilities for how to translate his political prose into practice. The dissertation’s investigation of Betar’s ethos and activity in Poland not only complicates the image presented by historians of Jabotinsky’s relationship to his young followers. It also calls into question the tendency of historians, when explaining the rise of a military ethos that privileged offensive rather than defensive attacks, to focus on the “local experience” of Labor Zionists coming of age in Palestine. Like scores of others in the Yishuv who participated in reprisal attacks against Arabs, Shalom Tabacznik was not

16 Ha-kinus ha-olami ha-shlishi le-betar, p.72. 17 Ibid., p.74. 18 Jabotinsky, Telegram to the Irgun, 24 June 1939 in David Niv, Ma’arahot ha-irgun ha-tsva’I ha’leumi: me-hagana le-hatkafa, 1937-1939 (Tel Aviv: Mossad Klozner, 1965), p.239. Emphasis mine.

245 a “native son,” but was born and raised in Poland. He grew up in a house on a street named after Piłsudski, in a city comprised primarily of Poles and Jews, who together made up only one-third of the province of Wołyn’s population. He would have witnessed the struggles of Polish officials to “Polonize” the province against the will of many of its Ukrainian inhabitants, who constituted the majority in the region. He would have likely been aware of the policy of reprisal attacks occasionally conducted by the Polish military when responding to the terrorist activity of radical Ukrainian nationalists in east Galicia.19 Indeed, had he lived through September 1938, he might have read the first issue of the Irgun’s Polish-language newspaper, whose article “Piłsudski and Active Battle” included quotes from the Sanacja leader that spoke of the necessity of violent guerilla attacks against the enemies of the Polish nation.20 By the time Tabacznik left Łuck in August 1937, Irgun leaders from Palestine had arrived in Poland to recruit members from Betar’s ranks and court the support of the Polish government to provide them with military training.21 They owed much of their success with receiving government support to the mutually beneficial relationship between Betar’s leaders and Polish government officials, explored in detail in this dissertation. Tabacznik himself had been the beneficiary of this relationship: it was in a PW training program that he first learned how to use a gun.22 Despite the rise of antisemitism in Poland, both Polish government officials and Revisionist leaders continued to consider one another as potential allies. Betar’s leaders persisted in their declarations of admiration for Poland’s liberation struggle, and never stopped urging their followers to use their vision of the Polish patriot as a model for how Jews should behave in Palestine. As late as the summer of 1939, an article in one of Betar’s journals spoke of Poland and Palestine as the “two fatherlands” of Betar’s members.23 The phrase not only underscored the sense of

19 Alexander J Motyl, “Ukrainian Nationalist Political Violence in Inter-War Poland, 1921-1939.” East European Quarterly 19, no.1 (1985), pp. 45-55. 20 “Z pism Józefa Piłsudskiego: Polityka walki czynnej” Jerozolima Wyzwolona 11 September 1938, pp.12-13. See also Dr. Jan Bader, “Nauka 6-go sieprnia” Trybuna Narodowa 11 August 1939. 21 Weinbaum, A Marriage of Convenience, pp. 126-133. 22 See Tabacznik’s certificate for completing a self defense course in Łuck, undated, JI/K16/1/2, as well as a biographical account of Tabacznik, JI/K16/1/1, p.1. 23 Seweryn Liwa, “Dwie Ojczyzny” Chad-Ness 4, 19 (May 1939), p. 13. For further declarations of Revisionism as Polish patriotism, see “Brit Trumpeldor,” Trybuna Narodowa, December 2, 1938;

246 attachment to Poland expressed by many of the Revisionist movement’s members. It also hinted at the deep imprint that Polish nationalism left on the formation of the Zionist Right. As this dissertation demonstrates, the admiration expressed by young Polish Jews towards the culture of Polish scouting movements, and later, the public culture of the Sanacja, convinced Jabotinsky to adopt a leadership cult and place militarism and opposition to socialism at the center of the Revisionist program. When the time came to create an elaborate culture for their youth movement, Betar leaders used Polish national myths to help formulate their own visions of how Zionists should think and behave, especially on the battlefield. Although the Arab Revolt took place in Palestine, the responses chosen by many Irgun members to the crisis drew largely from the models of military action first presented to them as Betar members in Poland. Despite the fact the Revisionist movement only counted several thousand members in Palestine, the Irgun’s military actions played a pivotal role in propelling the debate about the use of force within the Yishuv. As the revolt progressed, the approaches first developed by Betar’s leaders and members, and later implemented by the Irgun, became increasingly compelling to Zionists across the political spectrum. Although Labor Zionists in Palestine insisted that they maintained a “purity of arms,” military groups under their auspices increasingly initiated violent clashes with Arabs.24 Just as Jabotinsky and the Revisionist movement had done for a decade, they too began to wrestle with how to blur the lines between defensive and offensive military actions. Interwar Labor Zionists would have adamantly denied the claim that they were reproducing elements of the rhetorical styles and practices of the Zionist Right, which had often turned to Poland and Polish nationalism for inspiration. But when the moment arrived for the “native born” young Jews of Palestine to join underground Labor Zionist battalions that conducted reprisal attacks, at times against civilians, they had at their disposal an arsenal of thousands of articles from Betar’s journals that offered moral justification for employing violence against Palestine’s Arab population. Thus, although the Arab Revolt may have marked the first time a Zionist offensive military ethos was

“Sprawozdanie Sytuacyjne z ruchu politycznego” Urząd Wojewódzki Warszawski, APW/microfilm 18942/475/109, p.137. 24 Shapira, pp.250-257.

247 implemented on a wide scale, this ethos first emerged and developed within Betar’s ranks in Poland. As they faced an onslaught of terrorist attacks launched by Arab fighters, Jewish leaders in Palestine increasingly adopted one of the few messages of Betar that remained clear and constant throughout the interwar period. In a world where Jews constantly feared for their lives, striking back, and at times striking first, would be the only way to survive. If this message was attractive to young Jews in Palestine in the late 1930s, it would be all the more compelling to them in the years that followed, when the friends and family they had left behind in Europe—including the vast majority of Betar’s members—suffered a fate far more horrific than Jabotinsky, or any other Jewish leader on the eve of the Second World War, could have ever imagined.

248 BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

ARCHIVES

Poland

AAN: Archiwum Akt Nowych (Archive of New Documents), Warsaw

Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych (MSW)

1378 Urząd Wojewódzki Kielecki, Wydział Społeczno-Polityczny

1380 Urząd Wojewódzki Lubelski

1181 Urząd Wojewódzki w Łucku

1183 Urząd Wojewódzki w Brześciu

1185 Urząd Wojewódzki we Lwowie

1186 Urząd Wojewódzki we Stanisławowie

1402 Komisariat Rządu m.st. Warszawy, Wydział Bezpieczeństwo Publicznego

2019 Komenda Powiatowa Policji Państwowej w Stanislawowie (1922-26, 1928)

APW: Archiwum Państwowe m.st. Warszawie (National Archives of the Capital City of Warsaw), Warsaw.

Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych (MSW)

475 Wydział Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego

APK: Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie (National Archives of Kraków)

Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych (MSW)

29/215 Województwo Krakowskie, Wydział Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego

249

APwK: Archiwum Państwowe w Kielcach (National Archives in Kiecle)

Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych (MSW)

100 Urząd Wojewódzki Kielecki, Wydział Społeczno-Polityczny

APL: Archiwum Państwowe w Lublinie

Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych (MSW)

1138, 403 Urząd Wojewódzki Lubelski, Wydział Społeczno-Polityczny

CAW: Centarlne Archiwum Wojskowe (Centarl Military Archives, Warsaw)

I.300\69 Państwowy Urząd Wychowania Fizycznego Przysposobienia Wojskowego

Israel

JI: Machon Jabotinsky (Jabotinsky Institute), Tel Aviv

A1 Personal Collection, Ze’ev Jabotinsky.

B1 Betar Command in Riga and Vienna, 1927-1931

B29 Records from Betar in Latvia and Estonia, 1925-1939

B33 Records from Betar in Poland

EB4 David Boiko Interviews

G1 Records from the Paris Bureau of the Revisionist Movement, 1924-1929

G2 Records of the Revisionist Executive in London, 1929- 1933

G33 Records of the Revisionist Movement in Poland, 1925- 1997

H8 Files from the Defense Attorney, Arlosoroff Murder Trial

250 K16 Files on “Olei Ha-garidom” [“Those Who Went to the Gallows”]

P153 Personal Records, Hen-Melech Merchavia

P183 Personal Records, Aharon Propes

CAHJP: Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem

HM2/8665.2 Urząd wojewódzki, Wydział Społeczno-polityczny m. Stanisławów, 1921-1930. Originally in the State Archive of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (DAIFO), f.2, op.3, d.1094.

HM2/8652 Urząd wojewódzki, Wydział Społeczno-polityczny m. Stanisławów, 1929. Originally in the State Archive of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (DAIFO), f.2, op.1, d.682.

P172/110 Alfonso Pacifici Archive.

CZA: Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem.

A127 Yitzhak Grünbaum Collection.

DD1 Zionist Organizations in Poland.

DRC: Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center Archive P-32 Moshe Friedman, Personal Archives

T-32 The Territorial Collection “Poland”

United States

YIVO YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

RG4 Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland. Collection, 1932-1939.

NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS

Avodatenu Ba-derekh Bafrayung Arbeter Shtime Baranovitsher Vokh Biuletin shel betar be-polin: avodatenu

251 Cahiers du Betar Chad-Ness Chwila Cyjon Davar Degalenu Der Emes Der Judenstaat Derekh Ha-shomer Ha-le’umi Der Moment Der Nayer Veg Di Tat Di Velt Doar Hayom Dziennik Warszawski Ha-medina Haneszer Ha-yarden Haszachar Haynt Hazit Ha’am Igrot Igrot Livnei Betar Jardenu Jerozolima Wyzwolona Jewish Telegraphic Agency Konferenz Zeitung: Teglikher organ fun der zekster veltkonferents fun “Brit Ha-tzohar” La-Nitzahon: Iton darga alef ken betar baranowicze Madrikh Betar Massuot Menorah Morgn Zhurnal Nasz Przegląd Naye Folktsaytung Nowy Dziennik Pinsker Shtime Rassvyet Revisionistische Blätter Tel Chaj The Times The Zionist Trybuna Narodowa Tsiyonistishe Bleter Unzer Frayhayt Unzer Velt Unzer Vort

252 Yediot Hehalutz

PAMPHLETS, ARTICLES, BOOKS

Avodatenu: din ve-heshbon shel mifkedet ha-galil le-betar le-polanya ha-ktana ha- mizrahit be-lvov. Lwów: 1935.

Baranowski, Władysław. Rozmowy z Piłsudskim 1916-1931. Warszawa: 1938.

Begin, Menachem. Der Betar un zayn vort tsu di idishe eltern. Warsaw: 1934.

Ben-Szem (Feldszu), Reuwen. Yugend tsionizm: ha-shomer ha-le’umi. Warsaw: Rekord, 1929.

Betar be-polanya: Igrot ha-mifkada ha-rashit mispar alef: Tarshim tochnit ha- avoda (arbayts-plan). Warsaw: October 1928.

Brandstätter, Roman. Legion żydowski Adama Mickiewicza (dzieje I dokumenty). Warszawa: 1932.

Brit Trumpeldor, mutsa al yedei Brit Trumpeldor be-vilna. Wilno: 1928.

Brit Trumpeldor: Hartsa’ot, vikuhim, hahlatot. Paris: Betar Command, 1931.

Conference des Sionistes Revisionists Tenue a Paris du 26 au 30 Avril 1925. Thessaloniki: 1925.

Di naye beylisade. Warsaw: Provizionierishn sekretariat fun velt-union fun tsionistn- revizionistn, 1933.

Gajówna, D. Krajoznawstwo: dla 4-go oddziału szkoły powszechnej i 1-ej klasy gimnazjum. Warsaw: Nasza Księg, 1931.

Gothelf, Yehuda and Avraham Kohen, eds. Sefer ha-Shomrim: antologyah la-yovel ha-20 shel ha-shomer ha-tsa’ir, 1913-1933. Warsaw: ha-Hanhagah ha-‘elyonah le-hist. ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, 1934.

Gourevitch, Adolf. “Jabotinsky and the Hebrew Language” in Joseph Schechtman, The Life and Times of Vladimir Jabotinsky: Fighter and Prophet, 577-99. Silver Spring, Eshel Books, 1986.

Ha-kinus ha-olami ha-shlishi le-betar. Bucharest: Hotsa’at Shilton Betar, 1940.

Halperin, Yermiyahu. She’elat Ha-bitahon ha-ivri: Ikronei ha-strategiya ve-ha-taktika shel ha-haganah ha-ivrit. Warsaw: Remona, 1934.

253 Hamerow, Theodore. Remembering a Vanished World: A Jewish Childhood in Interwar Poland. New York: Berghahn Books, 2001.

Jabotinsky, Vladimir. Ma rotsim tsionim revizyonistim? Jerusalem: Hotsa’at Ha-va’ad ha-merkazi shel histadrut ha-tsiyonim ha-revizionistim be-erets yisra’el, 1925.

Vladimir. Samson Nazarei. Berlin: Slovo, 1927.

Kol bo la-talmid: sefer shel kis le-shnat 5687. Paris: Voltaire, 1927.

Zamlbukh far betarisher yugend. Warsaw: 1933.

The Story of the Jewish Legion. Translated by Shmuel Katz. New York: B. Ackerman, 1945.

“Autobiograpfia” in Ketavim nivharim, 11-189. Volume One. Jerusalem: Amichai, 1947.

Kirshenblatt, Mayer. They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust. With Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Koestler, Arthur. Arrow in the Blue: An Autobiography. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952.

La-nitsahon: iton mukdash le-hagigat yuval ha-asor le-yetsirat betar be-radom. Radom: 1935.

Le Bon, Gustave. Psychologie des foules. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1895.

Lerner, Zelig. Mahanot kayitz/Zumer Lagern. Warsaw: Grafja, 1932.

Lewakowski, Jerzy. Terenoznawstwo i kartografia wojskowa: podręcznik dla organizacji wojskowych i drużyn skautowych. Lwów: Związkowa Drukarnia, 1916.

Libertal, Hanna. Sefer nesharim: sefer-ezer le-rashei ha-darga alef shel brit-trumpeldor, helek alef. Warsaw: Hotsa’at Ha-shilton ve-netsivut betar be-polanya, 1934.

Lipman, A. Revizionistishe grund-problemen fun revizionistishe teoretiker. Warsaw: 1931.

Ludwig, Emil. Talks with Mussolini. London: Allen and Unwin, 1932.

Merchavia, Hen Melekh. Likrat Ha-medina: le-she’elot he-halutziyut ve-ha-binyan. Białystok: M. Prużanski, 1930.

254 Miller, E.A. “Il Fascismo, Italian Education and the Church” The School Review, 38,7 (September 1930): 510-524.

Mikulski, Antoni Jan and Juljusz Saloni. W Lipkach: Czytanki dla II klasy szkół powszechnych, 2nd edition. Lwów: Ossolineum,1933.

Ministerstwo Wyznań Religijnych i Oświecenia Publicznego, Program nauki w publicznych szkołach powszechnych drugiego stopnia z polskim językiem nauczania, Historja. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Książek Szkolnych, 1935.

Mussolini, Benito. The Doctrine of Fascism. Translated by Jane Soames. New York: Howard Fertig, 1968.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Trans. and ed. by Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Perelman, Jakób. Ruch Rewizjonistyczny w Polsce, 1922-1936. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Europa, 1937.

Propes, Aharon. Dos lebn fun yosef trumpeldor. Warsaw: 1930.

Radliński, Tadeusz. Krajoznawstwo: podręcznik dla klasy pierwszej szkół średnich i miejskich. Warsaw: M. Arct, 1919.

Remba, Isaac ed. Shnatayim: din ve-heshbon shel netsivut betar be-polanya. Warsaw: Kairo,1934.

Salsitz, Norman. A Jewish Boyhood in Poland: Remembering Kolbuszowa. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006.

Schreiber, Mieczysław and Dr. Eugeniusz Piasecki. Harce Młodzieży Polskiej. Lwów: 1917.

Sefer Radom. Tel Aviv: Irgun Yots’ei Radom Be-Israel, 1961.

Sliwinski, Walerjan Jeremi. Sygnalizacja: podręcznik dla harcerzy. Warszawa: Nakład księgarni SW Wojciecha, 1921.

Trumpeldor, Joseph. Mehayey Yosef Trumpeldor: kovts mikhtavim ve-keta’ei reshimot. Edited by Menachem Poznanski. Tel Aviv: Hotsa’at Ha-histadrut ha-klalit shel ha-ovdim ha-ivri’im be-erets yisra’el, 1953.

Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929. London: H.M.S.O. 1930.

255 Remba, Isaac ed. Shnatayim: Din ve-heshbon shel netsivut Betar be-polanya. Warsaw: Futura, 1934.

Weinreich, Max. Der veg tsu unzer yugnt: yesoydes, metodn, problemen fun yidishn yugnt forshung. Wilno: Drukarnia D. Krejensa, 1935.

Weizmann, Chaim. Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann. New York: Harper, 1949.

Wyrobek, Zygmunt. Harcerz w polu: ćwiczenia w terenie. Lwów: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1926.

PRIMARY SOURCE COLLECTIONS

Cała, Alina, ed. Ostatnie pokolenie : autobiografie polskiej młodzieży żydowskiej okresu międzywojennego: ze zbiorów YIVO Institute for Jewish Research w Nowym Jorku. Warszawa: Wydawn. Sic!, 2003.

Carpi, Daniel, ed. Igrot Ze’ev Jabotinsky. 11 Volumes. Jerusalem: Makhon Jabotinsky be-Yisrael. 1992-2012.

Jabotinsky, Vladimir. Ketavim. 18 Volumes. Jerusalem: Amihai, 1947.

Nedava, Joseph, trans and ed. ha-derekh ‘el ha-revizyonizm ha-tsiyoni: kovets ma’amarim be-“Rassvyet” la-shanim 1923-1924. Tel-Aviv: Makhon Jabotinsky be-Yisra’el, 1984.

ha-Revizyonizm ha-Tsiyoni be-hitgabshuto: kovets ma’amarim be-“Razsvyet” la- shanim 1925-1929. Tel Aviv: Makhon Jabotinsky, 1985.

Shandler Jeffrey, ed. Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland Before the Holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Abrams, Philip. “Rites de Passage: The Conflict of Generations in Industrial Society” Journal of Contemporary History 5,1 (1970): 175-190.

Alaimo, Kathleen. "Review Essay: Childhood and Adolescence in Modern European History" Journal of Social History 24, 3 (1991): 591-601.

“Shaping Adolescence in the Popular Milieu: Social Policy, Reformers, and French Youth, 1870-1920” Journal of Family History 17, 4 (1992): 419-438.

256

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Translated by Robert Baldick. London: Cape, 1962.

Aschheim, Steven. Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German-Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.

Bacon, Gershon. “The Poznanski Affair: Kehillah Politics and the Internal Political Realignment of Polish Jewry” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 4 (1988): 135-143.

The Politics of Tradition: The Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916-1939 Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1996.

“Warsaw-Radom-Vilna: Three Disputes over Rabbinical Posts in Interwar Poland and their Implications for the Change in Jewish Public Discourse” Jewish History 13, 1 (1999): 103-126.

“National Revival, Ongoing Acculturation: Jewish Education in Interwar Poland” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook vol. 1,1 (2002): 71-92.

Bassok, Ido. “Tenuat ha-no’ar ha-yehudiyot be-polin ben shete milhamot ha-olam” in Alilot ne’urim: Otobiyografiot shel bene no’ar yehudim mi-polin ben shete milhamot ha-olam. Edited by Avraham Novershtern, 769-792. Tel Aviv: Institute for the History of Polish Jewry, 2011.

and Avraham Novershtern. “Ma’arakoht ha-hinukh li-yehudei polin ben shete milhamot ha-olam” in Alilot ne’urim: Otobiyografiot shel bene no’ar yehudim mi-polin ben shete milhamot ha-olam. Edited by Avraham Novershtern, 736-751. Tel Aviv: Institute for the History of Polish Jewry, 2011.

Baumann, Zygmunt. Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Ben Baruch, Shalom. Z’abotinsky, lohem ha-umah. Jeruslaem: Sh. Shvarts, 1943.

Ben-Eliezer, Uri. The Making of Israeli Militarism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945. Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 2001.

257 Ben-Yerucham, Chen. Sefer Betar: Korot u-mekorot vols. 1-3. Tel Aviv: Ha-Merkaz. 1969-1973.

Berkowitz, Michael. Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Bessel, Richard. “The ‘Front Generation’ and the Politics of Weimar Germany” in Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany, 1770-1968. Edited by Mark Roseman, 121-136. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Bilensky, Serhiy. Romantic Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Russian, Polish and Ukrainian Political Imaginations. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.

Bilski Ben-Hur, Raphaella. Kol yahid hu melekh: ha-mahshava ha-hevratit ve-ha-medinit shel Ze’ev Z’abotinski. Tel Aviv: Devir, 1988.

Bosworth, R.J.B. Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Dictatorship. London: Allen Lane, 2005.

Brenner, Lenni. The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism From Jabotinsky to Shamir. London: Zed Books, 1984.

Brumberg, Abraham. “The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in the late 1930s” in The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars. Edited by Chone Shmeruk et.al, 75-97. Hanover: University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press, 1989.

Brzoza, Czesław and Andrzej Leon Sowa. Historia Polski, 1918-1945. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2006.

Ciancia, Kathryn Ward. “Poland’s Wild East: Imagined Landscapes and Everyday Life in the Volhynian Borderlands, 1918-1939.” Ph.D dissertation. Stanford University, 2011.

Cohen, Carl. Communism, Fascism and Democracy: The Theoretical Foundations. 3rd Ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1997.

Cohen, Gary. The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861-1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.

Cohen, Mitch. Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel. New York: Blackwell, 1987.

Dabrowski, Patrice. Commemorations and the Shaping of Modern Poland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. de Felice, Renzo. Le interpretazioni del fascismo Rome: Laterza y Figli, 1969.

258

Diggins, John P. “Flirtation with Fascism: American Pragmatic Liberals and Mussolini’s Italy” The American Historical Review vol.71, no.2 (January 1966): 487-506.

Donson, Andrew. Youth in a Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism and Authority in Germany, 1914-1918. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Dowe, Dieter ed. Jugendprotest und Generationenkonflikt in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert. Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1986.

Druker, Abraham G. “Jewish Volunteers and the Ottoman-Polish Cossack Units during the Crimean War” Jewish Social Studies 16 (1954): 351-375.

Eatwell, Roger. Fascism: A History. London: Chatto and Windus, 1995.

Ebner, Michael R. Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Edwards, P.G. “The Foreign Office and Fascism, 1924-1929” Journal of Contemporary History, 5,2 (1970): 53-161

Efron, John. Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

Eisenstadt, S.N. “Archetypal Patterns of Youth” in Youth: Change and Challenge. Edited by Erik Erikson, 3-46. New York: John Wiley, 1963.

Elam, Yigal. ha-Gedudim ha-‘Ivriyim be-milhemet ha-‘olam ha-rishonah. Tel Aviv: Ma’arakhot, 1973.

Eley, Geoff and Ronald Suny, “Introduction” in Becoming National: A Reader. Edited by Geoff Eley and Ronald Suny, 3-38. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Elichai, Joseph. Tenu’at ha-mizrahi be-Polin ha-kongresa’it, 1916-1927. Tel Aviv: Moreshet, 1993.

Elkar, Rainer. “The Battle for the Young: Mobilizing young people in Wilhemine Germany” in Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany, 1770-1968. Edited by Mark Roseman, 92-104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Engel, David. “Poland from 1795 to 1939” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. Volume 2. Edited by Gershon Hundert, 1381-1411. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

259 Esden-Tempska, Carla. National and Civic Education in Polish Elementary School Textbooks in the Interwar Period. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1991.

Esler, Anthony ed., The Youth Revolution: The Conflict of Generations in Modern History. Lexington: Heath, 1974.

Fishman, David. The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.

Frank, Alison Fleig. Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Frankel, Jonathan. “The Yizkor Book of 1911” in Religion, Ideology and Nationalism in Europe and America: Essays in Honor of Yehoshua Arieli. Edited by H. Ben Israel, 355-84. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1986.

Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.

Funkenstein, Amos. “The Dialectics of Assimilation” Jewish Social Studies 1,2 (1995): 1-14.

Gądek, Mariusz, ed. Wokół Strachu: dyskusja o książce Jana T. Grossa. Kraków: Znak, 2008.

Gal, Alon, ed. Ha-Tsiyonut la-ezoreha: hebetim ge’o-tarbutiyim. 3 Volumes. Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2010.

Garbowska, Wanda. Szkolnictwo powszechne w Polsce w latach 1932-1939. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1976.

Gelber, Yo’av. “Hitpathut kokho ha-tsva’i shel ha’yishuv” Toldot ha-yishuv ha-yehudi be-erets yisrael. Edited by Moshe Lissak and Zohar Shavit, pp.625-632. Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1998.

Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.

Gillis, John. Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1770- Present (New York: Academic Press, 1974), pp.95-183.

“The Evolution of Juvenile Delinquency in England, 1890-1914” Past and Present 67 (1975): 96-126.

Gitelman, Zvi. A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. New York: Schocken Books, 1988.

260 Glerter, Menachem. “Kehillat Stanislawow bi-shenot 1918-1939” in Arim Ve-Imahot Be- Israel: matsevat kodesh le-kehilot yisrael she-nihrevu bi-yede ‘aritsim u-teme’im. Edited by Rabbi Y.L. Ha-Cohen Maimon, 189-382. Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kuk, 1946.

Goldshtein, Ya’akov. Mifleget po’ale erets yisrael: gormim le-hakamatah. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1975.

Ba-derekh le-hegemonyah: mapai, hitgabshut mediniyuta, 1930-1936. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1980.

From Fighters to Soldiers: How the Israeli Defense Forces Began. Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 1998.

Goldshtein, Yosef. Ben tsiyonut medinit le-tsiyonut ma’asit: ha-tenu’ah ha-tsiyonit be- rusiya be-reshita. Jerusalem: Magnes University Press, 1991.

Gorodenchik Robinson, Rinat. Se’ara mesaya’at: ha-tenuah ha-revizionistit ba-shanim 1925-1940. Jerusalem: Yad Yitshak Ben Tsvi, Machon Z’abotinski, 2010.

Gottesman, Itzik Nakhmen. Defining the Yiddish Nation: The Jewish Folklorists of Poland Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003.

Grant, Mariel. Propaganda and the Role of the State in Interwar Britain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Griffin, Roger. The Nature of Fascism. London: Routledge, 1993.

International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus. London: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Hart, Mitchell. Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

, ed. Jews and Race: Writings on Identity and Difference, 1880-1940. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2011.

Haumann, Heiko. “Adam Mickiewicz und der jüdisch-polnische Messianusmus” in Fenster zur Geschichte, 20 Quellen—20 Interpretationen. Edited by in Bernhard Degen, 247-259. Basel: a.M., 1992.

Hein, Heidi. Der Piłsudski-Kult und seine Bedeutung für den polnischen Staat 1926- 1939. Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2002.

Heller, Celia. On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.

261

Heller, Joseph. “Ha-monizm shel ha-matara o ha-monizm shel ha-emtza’im? ha-mahloket ha-ra’ayonit ve-ha-politit ben ze’ev z’abotinski le-ben aba ahimeir, 1928-1933” Tsion 52,3 (1987): 315-369

The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940-1949. London: Frank Cass, 1995.

“Jabotinsky’s Use of National Myths in Political Struggles” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 12 (1996): 185-201

“Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Revolt against Materialism—In search of a World View” Jewish History 12,2 (1998): 51-67.

Hertz, Jacob. Di geshichte fun a yugnt: der kleyner bund tsukufnt in poyln. New York: Unzer tsayt, 1946.

Holman, Valerie and Debra Kelly, eds., France at War in the Twentieth Century: Myth, Metaphor and Propaganda. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000.

Horowitz, Brian. Empire Jews: Jewish Nationalism and Acculturation in 19th and Early 20th Century Russia. Bloomington: Slavica, 2009.

Hroch, Miroslav. Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press 1985.

Hundert, Gershon. Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Geneology of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Hyman, Paula. Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995.

Jacobs, Jack. Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009.

Johnpoll, Bernard K. The Politics of Futility: The General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917-1943. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967.

Jones, Gill. Youth. Cambridge: Polity, 2009.

Judson, Pieter and Marsha Rozenblit. “Introduction: Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe” in Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe. Edited by Pieter Judson and Marsha Rozenblit, 1-18. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005.

Juśko, Edmund. Szkolnictwo powszechne w powiecie tarnowskim w latach 1918-1939. Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2008.

262

Kalman, Samuel. The Extreme Right in Interwar France: The Faisceau and the Croix de Feu Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.

Kaplan, Eran. The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and its Ideological Legacy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.

Kaplan, Marion. The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Kassow, Samuel D. “Community and Identity in the Interwar Shtetl” in The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars. Edited by Yisrael Gutman, Ezra Mendelsohn, Jehuda Reinharz, Chone Shmeruk, 198-220. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1989.

“Communal and Social Change in the Polish Shtetl: 1900-1939” in Jewish Settlement and Community in the Modern Western World. Edited by Ronald Dotterer, et al., 39-55. Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1991.

“Polish Jews and the Landkentenish movement in the 1920s and 1930s” in Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place. Edited by Julia Brauch et al, 244- 264. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008.

Katz, Shmuel. Z’abo: Biografiya shel ze’ev z’abotinski. 2 vols. Tel Aviv: Devir, 1993.

Kawałec, Krzystof. Narodowa Demokracja Wobec Faszyzmu, 1922-1939. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1989.

Keren, Michael and Keren. We are Coming, Unafraid: the Jewish Legions and the Promised Land in the First World War. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2010.

Kesik, Jan. Naród pod bronią i społeczeństwo w programie polskiej polityki wojskowej 1918-1939. Wrocław: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1998.

Kieval, Hillel. The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870-1918. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

King, Jeremy. Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, and Marcus Moseley et al, “Introduction” in Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Interwar Poland, edited by Jeffrey Shandler, xi-xlii. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

263 Kister, Yosef. Tagar u-magen: Ze’ev Jabotinsky ve-ha’etzel. Tel Aviv: Hotsa’at misdar al shem ze’ev Jabotinsky, 2004.

Kleiner, Israel. From Nationalism to Universalism: Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky and the Ukrainian Question. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2000.

Kopstein, Jeffrey S. and Jason Wittenburg, “Between State Loyalty and National Identity: Electoral Behaviour in Interwar Poland” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 24 (2011):171-186.

Landau-Czajka, Anna. Syn będzie Lech…Asymilacja Żydów w Polsce międzywojennej. Warszawa: Neriton, 2006.

Laqueur, Thomas W. “Memory and Naming in the Great War” in The Politics of Commemoration. Edited by John Gillis, 150-167. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Laqueur, Walter. A History of Zionism. New York: Random House, 1972.

Lewin, Isaac. “The Political History of Polish Jewry, 1918-1919” in A History of Polish Jewry During the Revival of Poland. Edited by Isaac Levin and Nahum Michael Gelber, 5-220. New York: Shengold Publishers, 1990.

Laqueur, Walter. Fascism: Past, Present, Future. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Lichtenstein, Tatjana. “Making Jews at Home: Jewish Nationalism in the Bohemian Lands, 1918-1938” Ph.D dissertation. University of Toronto, 2009.

Lindheim, Ralph and George S.N. Luckyj, “Introduction” in Towards an Intellectual History of Ukraine: An Anthology of Ukrainian Thought from 1710 to 1995, edited by Ralph Lindheim and George S.N. Luckyj, 7-29. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.

Linton, Derek. Who Has the Youth, Has the Future: The Campaign to Save Young Workers in Imperial Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Lissak, Moshe and Zohar Shavit, eds. Toldot ha-yishuv ha-yehudi be-erets yisrael me-az ha-‘aliyah ha-rishonah. Volume 3. Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1998.

Litvak, Olga. Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Livezeanu, Irina. Cultural Politics in : Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918-1930. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

264 Kunicki, Mikołaj Stanisław. “The Polish Crusader: The Life and Times of Bolesław Piasecki, 1915-1979.” Ph.D dissertation. Stanford University, 2004.

Lyttelton, Adrian. “Fascism and Violence in Post-War Italy: Political Strategy and Social Conflict” in Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe. Edited by Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld, 257- 274. London: Macmillan with Berg Publishers for the German Historical Institute, 1982.

The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929. 3rd Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Mahler, Raphael. Yehude polin ben shte milhamot ‘olam: historyah kalkalit-sotsi’alit le- or ha-statistika. Tel Aviv: Devir, 1968.

Marcus, Joseph. Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919-1939. New York: Mouton Publishers, 1983.

Mann, Michael. Fascists. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Martin, Sean. Jewish Life in Cracow1918-1939. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2004.

Mauersberg, Stanisław. Szkolnictwo powszechne dla mniejszości narodowych w Polsce w latach 1918-1939. Warszawa: Ossolineum, 1968.

Maynes, Mary Jo. Schooling in Western Europe: A Social History. Albany: State University of New York, 1985.

Mazower, Mark. Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Penguin Books, 1998)

Mędrzecki, Włodzimierz. Województwo wołyńskie 1921-1939: elementy przemian cywilizacyjnych, społecznych i politycznych. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1988.

Melzer, Emanuel. No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry, 1935-1939. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997.

Mendelsohn, Ezra. Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915-1926. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.

265 Michlic, Joanna. Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

Miron, Dan. Ha-gabish ha-me-maked: prakim al ze’ev jabotinsky ha-mesaper ve-ha- meshorer Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 2011.

Moseley, Marcus. “Life, Literature: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Interwar Poland” Jewish Social Studies 7, 3 (2001), pp. 1-51.

Moss, Kenneth. “Not the Dybbuk but Don Quixote: Translation, Deparochialization, and Nationalism in Jewish Culture” in Culture Front: Representing Jews in Eastern Europe. Edited by Benjamin Nathans and Gabriella Safran, 196-240. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Mosse, George. The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964.

“Introduction: The Genesis of Fascism” Journal of Contemporary History 1 (1966): 14-26.

Motyl, Alexander J. “Ukrainian Nationalist Political Violence in Inter-War Poland, 1921- 1939.” East European Quarterly 19, no.1 (1985): 45-55.

Myers, David. Reinventing the Jewish Past: European Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Nagy-Talavera, Nicholas. The Green Shirts and Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1970.

Naimark, Norman. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

Nedava, Joseph. Z’abotinski be-hazon ha-dor. Tel Aviv: Shelah, 1950.

Niv, David. Ma’arahot ha-irgun ha-tsva’I ha’leumi: me-hagana le-hatkafa, 1937-1939. Tel Aviv: Mossad Klozner, 1965.

Nolte, Ernst. Der Fascismus in seiner Epoche: die Action Française, der Italienische Faschismus, Der Nazionalsozialismus. Munich: R. Piper, 1964.

__ Die Krise des Liberalen Systems und die Fascistischen Bewegungen. München: Piper, 1968.

_____ “The Problem of Fascism in Recent Scholarship” in Reappraisals of Fascism. Edited by Turner, Henry A. Jr., 26-42. New York: New Viewpoints, 1975.

266 Nowogrodzki, Emanuel. The Jewish Labor Bund in Poland, 1915-1939: From its Emergence as an independent political party until the beginning of World War II. Rockville: Shengold, 2001.

Nur, Ofer. “Hashomer Hatzair Youth Movement 1918-1924 from eastern Galicia and Vienna to Palestine: A Cultural History." Ph.D dissertation, University of California Los Angeles, 2004.

Nye, Robert. The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave Le Bon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic. London: Sage Publications, 1975.

Odziemkowski, Janusz. Armia i społeczeństwo II Rzeczypospolitej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 1996.

Paruch, Waldemar. Od konsolidacji państwowej do konsolidacji narodowej: Mniejszości narodowe w myśli politycznej obozu piłsudskiego, 1926-1939. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej.

Paxton, Robert. “The Five Stages of Fascism” The Journal of Modern History 70,1 (March 1998): 1-23.

The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Knopf, 2004.

Payne, Stanley. Fascism: Comparison and Definition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980.

A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.

Petersen, Jens. “Violence in Italian Fascism, 1919-1925” Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe. Edited by Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld, 275-299. London: Macmillan with Berg Publishers for the German Historical Institute, 1982.

Peukert, Detlev. Grenzen der Sozialdisziplinierung: Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Jugendfürsorge von 1878 bis 1932. Köln: Bund, 1986.

Pickhan, Gertrud. Gegen den Strom: Der Allgemeine Jüdische Arbeiterbund “Bund” in Polen, 1918-1939. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001.

Pinto, Vincenzo. “Between imago and res: The Revisionist-Zionist Movement’s Relationship with Fascist Italy, 1922-1938” Israel Affairs 10, 3 (2004): 90-109.

Plach, Ewa. The Clash of Moral Nations: Cultural Politics in Piłsudski’s Poland, 1926- 1935. Athens: Unviersity of Ohio Press, 2006.

267 Polonsky, Antony. Politics in Independent Poland, 1921-1939: The Crisis of Constitutional Government. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.

Little Dictators: The History of Europe Since 1918. London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1975.

and Joanna Michlic, eds. The Neighbors Respond: the controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

“Why did they hate Tuwim and Boy So Much? Jews and ‘Artificial Jews’ in the Literary Polemics of the Second Polish Republic” in Antisemitism and its Opponents in Modern Poland. Edited by Robert Blobaum, 189-209. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.

Pomfret, David M. “Lionized and Toothless: Young People and Urban Politics in Britain and France, 1918-1940” in European Cities, Youth and the Public Sphere in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried, 27-42. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2005.

Porter, Brian.When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Porter-Szűcs, Brian. Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, Poland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Prokop-Janiec, Eugenia. Polish-Jewish Literature in the Interwar Years Translated by Abe Shenitzer. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003.

Rabinowicz, Harry. The Legacy of Polish Jewry: A History of Polish Jews in the Inter-war Years. New York: Y. Yoseloff, 1965.

Ransel, David L. and Bozena Shallcross eds., Polish Encounters, Russian Identity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

Rezmer, Waldemar. “Służba wojskowa Żydów w siłach zbrojnych Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej“ in Mniejszości Narodowe i wyznaniowe w siłach zbrojonych Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej, 1918-1939. Edited by Zbigniew Karpusa and Waldemara Rezmera, 97-110. Toruń: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2001.

Riley, Dylan. The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain, and Romania, 1870-1945. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

Rodogno, Davide. Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation During the Second World War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

268 Rogger, Hans. “Afterthoughts” in The European Right: A Historical Profile. Edited by Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, 575-589. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.

Rosman, Moshe. The Lords’ Jews: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Ross, Corey. “Mass Politics and the Techniques of Leadership: The Promise and Perils of Propaganda in Weimar Germany” Modern German History, Vol. 24,2 (2006): 184-211.

Rothschild, Joseph. Piłsudski’s Coup d’Etat. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.

East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974.

Rozwadowski, Piotr. Państwowy Urząd Wychowania Fizycznego Przysposobienia Wojskowego, 1927-1939 Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 2008.

Rudnicki, Szymon. Obóz Narodowo Radykalny: Geneza i działalność. Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1985.

Żydzi w parlamencie II Rzeczypospolitej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 2004.

“Anti-Jewish Legislation in Interwar Poland” Antisemitism and its opponents in Modern Poland. Edited by Robert Blobaum, 148-170. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.

Ryder, Norman. “The Cohorts as a Concept in the Study of Social Change” American Sociological Review 30 (1965): 848-61

Sarid, Menachem. Le-shilton bakhartanu: ha-ma’avak al ha-hegemoniya ba-yishuv uva- tsiyonut. Hertsliya: Oren, 2004.

Schechtman, Joseph. Rebel and Statesman: The Vladimir Jabotinsky Story. New York: T. Yoseloff, 1955.

Fighter and Prophet: The Last Years. New York: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1961

and Yehuda Benari, History of the Revisionist Movement. Tel Aviv: Hadar, 1970.

Seton Watson, Hugh. The East European Revolution. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1951.

269 Eastern Europe Between the Wars 1918-1941. 3rd edition. New York: Archon Books, 1962.

Shapira, Anita. Ha ma-avak ha-nihzav: avoda ivrit, 1929-1939. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1977.

“The Religious Motifs of the Labor Movement” Zionism and Religion. Edited by Shmuel Almog, Jehuda Reinharz, Anita Shapira, 251-272. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1994.

Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948. Translated by William Templer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Reprinted by Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Shapira, Yonatan. Ahdut ha-‘avodah ha-historit: ‘otsamo shel ‘irgun politi. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1975.

Shavit, Ya’akov. Me-rov le-medina: ha-tenua ha-revizionistit, ha-tochnit ha-hityashvut ve-ha-ra’ayon ha-hevrati, 1925-1935. Tel Aviv: Yariv, 1978.

“Politics and Messianism: The Zionist Revisionist Movement and Polish Political Culture” Studies in Zionism 6,2 (1985): 229-246.

Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement. London: Frank Cass, 1988.

Shimoni, Gideon. The Zionist Ideology. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995.

Shindler, Colin. The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right. London: IB Taurus, 2009.

Shneer, David. Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, 1918-1930. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Shorrock, William I. “France and the Rise of Fascism in Italy, 1919-1923” Journal of Contemporary History 10, 4 (October 1975): 591-610.

Shternshis, Anna. Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923- 1939. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Shukman, Harold. War or Revolution: Russian Jews and Conscription in Britain, 1917. London: Valentine Mitchell, 2006.

Sienkiewicz, Witold, ed. Atlas Historii Żydów. Warszawa: Demart, 2010.

270

Sikorski, Eugeniusz. Szkice z dziejów harcerstwa polskiego w latach 1911-1939. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Interpress, 1989.

Smith, Anthony. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. New York: Blackwell, 1986.

Snyder, Timothy. The Reconstruction of Nations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Stanislawski, Michael. Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

Stauter-Halstead, Keely. The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848-1914. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Steffen, Katrin. Jüdische Polonität: Ethnizität und Nation im Spiegel der polnischsprachigen jüdischen Presse, 1918-1939. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004.

“Das eigene Durch das Andere: Zur Konstruktion jüdischer Polonität” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnows Institut 3 (2004): 89-111.

Stein-Ashkenazi, Esther. Betar be-erets yisra’el, 1925-1947. Jerusalem: Machon Jabotinsky, 1997.

Steinlauf, Michael. “Jewish Politics and Youth Culture in Interwar Poland: Preliminary Evidence from the YIVO Autobiographies” in Gitelman, Zvi ed., The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. 91-104.

Stern, Dina. Bene Akiva Lodz: Le-diokana shel tnuat no-ar be-terem shoa. Jerusalem: R. Mas, 1996.

Sternhell, Ze’ev and Mario Sznajder et al, The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Teller, Adam. Kesef, koah ve-hashpa’ah: ha-yehudim ba-ahuzot bet Radz’ivil be-Lita ba- me’ah ha-18. Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar le-toldot yisrael, 2006.

Teter, Magda. Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post- Reformation Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Teveth, Shabtai. Ben Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886-1948. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.

271

Tilles, Daniel and Salvatore Garau, eds. Fascism and the Jews: Italy and Britain. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011.

Tomaszewski, Jerzy. “The Role of Jews in Polish Commerce, 1918-1939” in The Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars. Edited by Israel Gutman, Ezra Mendelsohn et al, 141-157. Hanover: Published for Brandeis University Press by University Press of New England, 1989.

Trzebiatowski, Klemens. Szkolnictwo powszechne w Polsce w latach 1918-1932. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1970.

Tshor, Ze’ev. Ba-derekh le-hanhagat ha-yishuv: ha-histadrut be-reshita. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Tsvi, 1981.

Shorashei ha-politika ha-israelit. Kibbutz Ham’uchad: Ben Gurion University, 1987.

Tuvi, Ya’akov. Milhama bli gvulot: ha-tenuah ha-tsionit ha-revizionistit ve-sugiyat ha- aliya le-erets yisra’el ba-shanim 1930-1940. Jerusalem: Haifa University and Jabotinsky Institute, 2011.

Verhey, Jeffrey. “Some Lessons of the War: The Discourse on Propaganda and Public Opinion in Germany in the 1920s” in Violence and the Modern Condition. Edited by Bernd Hueppauf, 99-118. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997.

Walasek, Stefania. Szkolnictwo powszechne na ziemiach północno-wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej, 1915-1939. Kraków: Oficyna Wydawnicza Impuls, 2006.

Walicki, Andrzej. “The Paris Lectures of Mickiewicz and Russian Slavophilism” Slavonic and East European Review 46, 106 (1968): 155-175.

Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.

Walicki, Jacek. Ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce w latach 1926-1930. Łódź: Ibidem, 2005.

Weber, Eugen. Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: van Nostrand, 1964.

Weeks, Theodore. From Assimilation to Antisemitism: The “Jewish Question” in Poland, 1850-1914. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006.

Weinbaum, Laurence. A Marriage of Convenience: The New Zionist Organization and the Polish Government, 1936-1939. Boulder: East European Monographs, 1993.

272 “Shaking the Dust off: The Story of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Forgotten Chronicler, Reuben Feldschu (Ben Shem)” Jewish Political Studies Review 22: 3-4 (Fall 2010): 7-44.

Weiser, Kalman. Jewish People, Yiddish Nation: Noah Prylucki and the Folkists in Poland. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

Weissler, Chava. Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.

Whitney, Susan B. Mobilizing Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.

Williams, Robert Chadwell. Culture in Exile: Russian Emigres in Germany, 1881-1941. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972.

Wilson, Adrian. “The Infancy of the History of Childhood: An Appaisal of Philippe Aries,” History and Theory 19/1 (1980): 132-53.

Wohl, Robert. The Generation of 1914. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.

Wojtas, Dorota. Learning to Become Polish: Education, National Identity and Citizenship in Interwar Poland, 1918-1939. Leipzig: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009.

Zahra, Tara. Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.

Zait, David. Ha-utopia ha-shomrit: ha-shomer ha-tsa’ir be-Polin, 1921-1931. Givat Haviva: Ha-Merkaz le-moreshet Ben Gurion, 2002.

Żblikowski, Andrzej. “Poles and Jews in the Kresy Wschodnie—Interethnic Relations in the Borderlands, 1918-1939” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnows Institut 1 (2002): 41-53.

Zerubavel, Yael. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Zloch, Stephanie. Polnischer Nationalismus: Politik und Gesellschaft zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2010.

Zouplna, Jan. “Vladimir Jabotinsky and the Split within the Revisionist Union: From the Boulogne Agreement to the Katowice Putsch” The Journal of Israeli History 24 (January 2005): 35-63.

273